Has it been over a year already?
On November 30, 2022, ChatGPT was released for public use, went massively viraland started a frenzy in Silicon Valley And on Wall Street.
The debut of ChatGPT was a stunning moment for generative artificial intelligence as people discovered what the tool, capable of receiving written prompts from users and returning human-like responses, could do.
With ChatGPT, AI has entered the public consciousness as potentially one of the greatest technological advancements ever made, catalyzing new business models and reshaping various industries and business processes.
Cybersecurity is one of the industries transformed by AI, although the technology represents a unique double-edged sword for the sector: attackers and defenders use AI capabilities to improve their tactics.
As we pass the one-year anniversary of ChatGPT’s release party, it seems like a good time to delve deeper into how AI is changing the cybersecurity landscape. AI represents a major turning point for cybersecurity, and it’s important that everyone in the industry understands why and how.
Here are five things we’re seeing.
1. An AI “attack platform” is emerging.
The first use cases of AI in cybercrime are already problematic enough: for example, more convincing phishing emails, voice recordings, image cloning and deepfakes used for fraudulent activities. Hacker tactics have become infinitely more sophisticated than emails from Nigerian princes. And because AI-based hacking tools can mimic human behavior and learn from previous attacks, they are much harder to detect and defend against.
But this threat pales in comparison to the growth of hacking as an AI-driven service that makes it much easier to execute attacks. For example, a ChatGPT style tool called VerGPTeasily available on the dark web, can produce cybersecurity malware attack campaigns with far fewer resources and expertise than in the past.
The proliferation of such AI-driven hacking tools creates a platform with all the building blocks for attacks of unprecedented scale and lowers the barriers to entry for anyone wanting to build a potentially lucrative cybercriminal business .
The rise of AI-based hacking tools is making the future of cybersecurity increasingly challenging. As AI technology advances, malicious actors will continue to develop more sophisticated attacks capable of bypassing traditional defenses.
2. The best offense is a good defense.
As AI plays a larger role in the arsenal of cybercriminals, it is essential that organizations fight fire with fire by integrating AI technologies (machine learning algorithms, natural language processing and other tools). based on AI) in their cybersecurity strategies, in conjunction with more traditional strategies. tools such as antivirus protection, intrusion detection and identity management to identify and mitigate threats.
And here’s some good news: In the AI arms race against attackers, defenders have an advantage. This is because organizations have more data (about their IT environments, security capabilities, known vulnerabilities, etc.) than the bad guys. With this advancement in available data, they can train AI models to provide faster and more accurate identification of potential threats.
However, organizations lose this advantage unless they proactively keep up to date with the latest developments in AI and invest in the appropriate systems, those capable of detecting and preventing malicious use of generative AI and Analyze large amounts of data to detect anomalies.
3. SOC automation will accelerate.
Humans will continue to work in SOCs, but AI-based systems will increasingly take over routine operations.
The modern SOC looks more and more like a 21st factory of the century. Factories used to be filled with people on assembly lines; Today, robots do much of the work and humans work alongside them to handle more difficult tasks and keep everything running smoothly. A similar scenario is beginning to occur in SOCs and will progress rapidly in the coming years.
As attackers move very quickly and on a scale never seen before, it is good to have machines that monitor and detect suspicious activity in sprawling enterprises consisting of servers, network devices, laptops, phones and employee-owned tablets and Internet of Things devices. . They can do it faster and better than humans.
Another advantage: AI could finally help alleviate worrying and persistent cybersecurity problems. talent shortage.
4. Generative AI will break down security silos.
Cybersecurity has long been notoriously siloed, with organizations installing many different tools and products, often poorly interconnected. No matter how hard vendors and organizations work to integrate tools, bringing all relevant cybersecurity information into one place remains a significant challenge.
But AI offers a way to combine multiple data sets from many disparate sources and provide a truly unified view of an organization’s security posture, with actionable insights.
And with generative AI, getting this information is so simple, just ask the system questions like “What are the top three things I could do today to reduce risk?” or “What would be the best way to respond to this incident report?”
AI has the potential to consolidate security workflows in ways the industry has never been able to understand.
5. The way organizations store and consume data will radically change.
Generative AI will explode the very nature of data infrastructure. Think about it: all of the different tools that organizations use to store and manage data are designed for humans. Essentially, they are designed to segment information and place it in various electronic boxes so that users can retrieve it later. It is a model based on the functioning of the human mind.
But in the post-AI world, this construct will become obsolete. Data will not need to be consolidated and organized in the same way, since machines will do all the heavy lifting of collecting, retrieving, and contextualizing data.
In fact, data management will have a decidedly haphazard feel – which seems shocking considering Amazon did essentially the same thing when it adopted chance in its immense warehouses. Items are placed wherever there is open space and computers track items based on factors such as the speed and frequency with which customers order those products.
The same thing will happen with cybersecurity data. With AI, there will simply no longer be a reason to store and access data in the human-readable forms that we have always relied on. The impact on infrastructure will be profound, dwarfing previous transformations like cloud computing. Over time, this will completely transform cybersecurity, as it redefines the challenges we all face.
The hubbub since ChatGPT’s release last November has highlighted how quickly the AI train is moving. My five points show what organizations stand to gain by getting involved.
With Cybercrime Costs Worldwide projected going from $8.15 trillion this year to $13.82 trillion by 2028, as hackers increasingly exploit AI, is there really a choice?
