Spiking in the AI powered criminals

AI policies are low, use is high, and adversaries are taking advantage, says new AI study.

There is tremendous impact of AI , growing across the security space, bringing with it major implications for cybercriminals and defenders. It is an opportunity for the adversaries, with high use of AI.

The use of AI is expected to have positive and negative effects on global culture as we know it, but I suspect that cybercrime will be one of the areas most affected. On the negative side, AI can help streamline criminals' operations, making them more efficient, sophisticated, and scalable while allowing them to evade detection and attribution.

Digital trust professionals from around the globe—those who work in cybersecurity, IT audit, governance, privacy and risk—weighed in on generative AI—artificial intelligence that can generate text, images and other media—in a new pulse poll from ISACA that explores employee use, training, attention to ethical implementation, risk management, exploitation by adversaries, and impact on jobs.

Concerning the positive impact of AI on cybersecurity, defenders, and law enforcement, can use AI to counteract advancements in illicit activity by developing new tools, tactics and strategies to automate data analysis, perform predictive detection of illicit activity and perform more effective attribution of criminal activity. As per the report of Talos.

According to a report by MarketsandMarkets, the global AI in cybersecurity market size is expected to grow from $8.8 billion in 2020 to $38.2 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 23.3% during the forecast period.

The report also highlights the increasing need for AI in cybersecurity due to the rising number of cyber threats and the shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals.

Despite the uncertainty and risk surrounding AI, Cybercriminals could easily bypass signature-based detection systems by modifying the code or creating new variants of malware that were not yet in the database.

Signature-based detection systems could generate a high number of false positives, as legitimate traffic could be flagged as malicious if it happened to share similar characteristics to a known threat. This led to security analysts spending a significant amount of time investigating false positives, which could be a drain on resources.

On this back drop there is high grade of optimism in the face of challenges, Eighty-five percent of respondents also say AI is a tool that extends human productivity, and 62 percent believe it will have a positive or neutral impact on society as a whole.

Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA