expert
OPINION
HAIDER PASHA , CHIEF SECURITY OFFICER , EMEA & LATAM , PALO ALTO NETWORKS
Haider Pasha , Chief Security Officer for EMEA & LATAM at Palo Alto Networks , highlights that the future of cybersecurity will hinge on the dynamic interaction between offensive and defensive AI .
Staying ahead of evolving threats : AI to counter AI threats
t ’ s no secret that cyberthreats have
I increased dramatically in recent years , becoming more sophisticated and tougher to identify . Everyday , Palo Alto Networks analyses 750 million new and unique events ; detects 2.3 million new and unique attacks ; and blocks nearly 8.6 billion attacks . Businesses now find themselves facing more attacks as a result of AI , with the cost of cybercrime rising too .
While AI has been around for some time , the emergence and accessibility of GenAI in mainstream discourse over the last two years has ushered in an era of new and complex cybersecurity challenges . The weaponisation of AI by malicious actors is a growing concern , necessitating a proactive and strategic approach to defence .
Why is AI a cyberthreat ?
The tactics of cyber gangs have greatly advanced . Phishing and ransomware attacks have now developed into utilising AI to engineer deepfakes or creating malware capable of bypassing established security measures . AI is being used to automate the process of discovering and exploiting vulnerabilities in systems , thus reducing the time taken by threat actors to identify weaknesses and launch targeted attacks at a large scale .
Another limitation that has gathered attention as a potential threat is GenAI being manipulated to generate malicious output through prompt injection attacks . By getting these tools to answer questions in an unintended way , threat actors use prompt injection to gather sensitive information and even execute malicious code .
Suppliers and IT vendors have become one of the biggest vulnerabilities for attackers to exploit . Cyberthreat actors are always looking for the path of least resistance to carry out their attacks . Even with the most mature third-party management systems and state-of-the-art cybersecurity defences in the world , financial institutions , such as banks or fintechs , have been targeted by rogue nationstates and malicious hackers who use AI and ML algorithms to launch ransomware attacks .
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