Explore the advancements in AI and its impact on daily life, from enhanced efficiency to emerging security threats.
Artificial intelligence has been the leading the headlines for the last year. The advances it has made have been exponential since the first release of ChatGPT and the results continue to be amazing. In addition to its improved conversational abilities and its ability to create jaw-dropping realistic images and videos, AI holds great promises for the future. We are seeing AI pop up in everything. Soon you won’t be able to buy a light bulb without it being AI-enabled. Beyond the hype of AI, there is a lot of promise to how AI can help us in our day-to-day activities. Imagine your network being able to warn you of a potential switch failure months before it happened by analyzing seemingly innocuous network stats and logs? Or make a configuration change to your firewall by just typing “Block all traffic from Russia”? Solutions like these are already available from several of the leading technology providers.
While AI offers numerous benefits, it also presents significant risks. Hackers are also figuring out just how powerful AI is and how it can make their job easier. Take Social Engineering for instance. Spam and phishing have been an issue for years and at first, hackers were pretty successful even though they might not have been very convincing. There were almost always tell-tale signs that we could train people to look for in emails or ways that we would train users to validate that an email came from the person they thought it was, such as placing a call to the sender to ensure the email was legitimate. With AI, hackers are now able to craft much more believable emails to eliminate some of the red flags we have been trained to look for.
They are also using AI to generate deep-fakes of real individuals. A deep-fake is an AI generated voice or video image that looks and sounds like a real individual. Imagine getting a MS Team or Webex video chat from your “CEO”? It looks and sounds like your CEO so why would you question what they ask you to do? Attackers are figuring out how to use deep-fake technologies to do just this, oftentimes targeting users in your organization that can send money on the company’s behalf, such as the accounting department. This is just the tip of the iceberg of what they will be using AI for.
“A deep-fake is an AI generated voice or video image that looks and sounds like a real individual.”
So how are we going to adjust and be able to protect ourselves from these rapidly advancing attacks? In many ways, it will be the same way as we have been doing for years. Security has always been, and probably always will be a game of cat and mouse. The attackers will come up with a new attack and the defenders will have respond. We will be creating layers of protections within our environments that are also evolving. If an attacker can bypass a layer, there are many more that are designed to stop them. These attacks are new, they will just be coming at us faster that they have in the past and we need to make sure our defenses are up to the task. If you need assistance in evaluating you current defense strategy and capabilities, Contact us today or talk to your Keller Schroeder Account Manager and let us help you make sure you are on the path to defend yourself against the latest threats.
Written By:
Ryan Kremer
Vice President
Infrastructure Solutions Group
If you need any assistance with understanding the details within the advisory, understanding your current cybersecurity posture, your preparedness for a breach, or any other cybersecurity topic, we would love to have a discussion with you. Contact us today, and let’s chat about your environment and ways to lower your chances of becoming a victim of cybercrime.
