EDITOR ’ S question
BEN MATTHEWS , PARTNER , ALTMAN SOLON
recent survey of cybersecurity
A professionals by Sapio Research shows 75 % of executives saw an increase in attacks over the past year – and these come at a price . According to IBM , the average global cost of a data breach is now estimated at US $ 4.45 million – a 15 % increase from 2020 . This has led to global spend on cybersecurity reaching US $ 188 billion in 2023 , a number expected to increase as cybercrime is estimated to cost the global economy US $ 9.5 trillion in 2024 .
Today , CISOs should continue to pivot away from the reactive approach of legacy cybersecurity and implement preventive , proactive measures .
Many cybersecurity experts believe that advances in GenAI tooling are contributing to this rise in cybercrime . While chatbots like OpenAI ’ s GPT or Google ’ s Bard are programmed to not generate code that could be used for hacking purposes , attackers are finding new ways to ‘ trick ’ these chatbots into generating malicious code . This can include techniques like goading a chatbot to respond to a question as if it had ‘ no moral restraints ’ or by adding extra spaces between banned words when communicating with the chatbot to bypass censors .
GenAI chatbots can mimic fluid , written communications and make phishing emails , which are often riddled with spelling and grammatical errors , more linguistically complex and thus harder to weed out . What ’ s more , hackers can use GenAI chatbots to craft ‘ spear phishing ’ emails by adding in personalised information about potential victims and getting a tailored , highly credible result .
Cybersecurity : Going from reactive to proactive
Today , many business leaders have a reactive approach to cybersecurity , investing in tools like anti-malware software , password protection with Multi-Factor Authentication and firewalls . While these tools can be helpful for protecting against known threats , they won ’ t suffice when it comes to more complex cyberattacks .
Today , CISOs should continue to pivot away from the reactive approach of legacy cybersecurity and implement preventive , proactive measures . Conducting regular audits of systems to identify potential vulnerabilities and drafting company procedures for protecting sensitive data contribute to a culture of preventive security .
The cyberthreat landscape is changing rapidly and it can be useful to outsource this by hiring an external cybersecurity expert – for enterprise customers , this would be the security software vendors , and for SMBs they would do well to seek out the support of a Managed Security Service Provider ( MSSP ). These outside experts can use advanced analytical methods to identify security risks , provide holistic security solutions and in some cases , offer implementation and operational support .
While GenAI can increase certain types of cyberattacks , integrating AI into cybersecurity systems can improve existing resources . As the cybersecurity workforce gap reaches a high of 4 million people , 86 % of CISOs think that GenAI tools will mitigate talent shortages in security teams , according to Splunk ’ s 2023 CISO Report . Organisations can leverage AI to automate aspects of cyberdefence , like threat detection , response and prediction and better identify patterns of threat to arm themselves against hackers .
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