CIO OPINION
GenAI can dramatically increase the sophistication of spear-phishing attacks , elevating them above the boilerplate content and spelling errors or awkward grammar that organisations often teach users to look for . Now , when a malicious actor harvests a victim ’ s address book , they may also take email content and use it to generate tailored emails that match the syntax and subjects the compromised sender has used with each addressee .
AI also equips cybercriminals with new tools and capabilities . For example , organisations typically train employees to counter attempted business email compromise requests to bypass normal processes and transfer funds to support a senior executive such as the CEO by reaching out to the requester by phone or video to validate both the sender and the request .
Criminals have begun using AI-generated voice and video impersonations of the purported sender and chatbot-generated responses to thwart such checks .
AI-driven data analytics have given malicious cyber actors new tools for exploitation that make new classes of data attractive targets . A decade ago , only nationstates had the data centres and computing power to make it possible to exploit large data sets .
The AI-driven revolution in data mining and the growth of pay-as-you-go computing power and storage mean that massive data sets have become exploitable and attractive targets for criminal actors and nation-states .
Data favours defenders
Cybersecurity professionals use the term attack surface to describe the size and complexity of the digital environment and their difficulty in mapping or even fully understanding it , of dealing with the unknown
A would-be malicious cyber actor no longer needs any programming skills using GenAI , because large language model AI tools can be used to write malware .
www . intelligentcio . com INTELLIGENTCIO MIDDLE EAST 45