Could the introduction of Gen AI into the cyber world spell danger?

cyber

In a world where the need to digitalise and as well as the desire to connect online is growing stronger and stronger, the cyber industry plays a vital role in that.

While fighting off bad actors and dangerous hackers has long been a key part of cybersecurity, the need for the human touch has decreased since the early days. Now, technology is taking a leading role – none more so than artificial intelligence.

A particular area of AI – Generative AI – has the potential to change the world of cybersecurity massively.

In a recent article, Forbes remarked that Gen AI tools have the potential to change the way cyber threats are developed and executed.

To explain this more bluntly, Forbes said that with the ability to generate human-like text and speech, these models can be used to automate the creation of phishing emails, social engineering attacks, and other types of malicious content.

“We can absolutely expect to see a new class of threats to emerge in CyberTech thanks to Gen AI,” said Vladimir Ershov, head of data science and machine learning at Clausematch.

“The most efficient type of cyber-attacks today are still based on social engineering. With Gen AI, we could see hackers begin to automate the personalisation of such attacks. Today, all it takes is 30 seconds of your voice and just a bunch of photos to create a realistic virtual you.”

One of the key watchwords in this discussion around Gen AI in cybersecurity in personalisation. Currently, while hacking attempts, phishing and other forms of malicious attacks can sometimes be easy to miss – there is somewhat of a broad idea of what a cyberattack looks like.

In this sense, many users of interactive technology have learnt how to spot something that looks like a cyberattack. However, personalisation of cyberattacks could provide a whole new raft of challenges for companies and individuals alike.

There is, therefore, a significant need for the CyberTech sector to keep pace with technological advances in order to face off new challenges and ward off new threats.

Ershov broadly echoed such a point, “Thanks to Gen AI, we could see computers have a realistic conversation with realistic replies to real humans. Gen AI will force the CyberTech sector to keep ahead of technological advances and ward off new threats.”

Arctic Intelligence CEO and founder Anthony Quinn added, “Artificial Intelligence (AI) could change the CyberTech sector both positively, in the form of detecting threats, deploying counter-measures to combat these threats and build collective responses to future threats.

“However, used by bad actors, AI could be used to create negative outcomes and as a means of initiating cyber-attacks, so there are two sides to this and will be very interesting as to how this plays out over the long term”.

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