Balancing AI’s promise with privacy and intellectual property concerns
Organizations increasingly integrate AI technologies into their cybersecurity architectures to enhance detection, response, and mitigation capabilities.
One of the key strengths of AI in cybersecurity lies in its ability to predict and prevent attacks before they occur. Powered by AI, predictive analytics enables security systems to forecast potential vulnerabilities and weaknesses, allowing organizations to implement proactive defense strategies and stay one step ahead of cyber adversaries.
In this article, you will find excerpts from AI surveys we covered in 2023. These surveys will give your organization insight into statistics that can help create AI security strategies moving forward.
AI and contextual threat intelligence reshape defense strategies
AI will become broadly accessible to practitioners, regardless of their skillset or maturity level. As concerns for data privacy with AI grow, companies will form their own policies while waiting for government entities to enact regulatory legislation. The US and other countries may establish some regulations in 2024, although clear policies may not take shape until 2025 or later.
The hidden obstacles to integrating AI into your business
76% of organizations report not having comprehensive AI policies in place, an area that must be addressed as companies consider and govern all the factors that present a risk in eroding confidence and trust. These factors include data privacy and data sovereignty, and the understanding of and compliance with global regulations.
AI disinformation campaigns pose major threat to 2024 elections
2024 will bring with it presidential campaigns in Taiwan and the United States. As a result, malicious actors will increasingly use generative AI to spread disinformation. This continues a concerning trend seen in recent elections, with bots and bot farms contributing to divisiveness and the dissemination of intentionally misleading or entirely false content, including quotes and memes.
AI helps leaders optimize costs and mitigate risks
The excitement and curiosity around AI – and the possibilities that come with it – have the industry buzzing. And the results speak for themselves. 32% of IT leaders said that integrating AI was the top priority in 2023, followed by reducing security risks (31%) and reducing IT costs (29%).
Data protection demands AI-specific security strategies
Although AI is top of mind for data professionals across every sector, trust, security, and compliance are still leading organizational priorities. 88% of data leaders believe that data security will become an even higher priority in the next 12 months, ahead of AI.
AI is transforming financial crime compliance
While 86% of compliance, operations, risk and IT professionals at banks and non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs) surveyed said they would increase spending on AI and ML over the next two years, a 93% of respondents said that instead of using automation to reduce staff, they would focus that extra capacity on strategies to manage risk and grow the business, according to WorkFusion.
AI strengthens banking’s defense against fraud
63% of respondents indicated that they are comfortable with AI helping their bank detect fraud. Almost half of respondents abandoned a new bank account application after starting because it didn’t feel secure or was too cumbersome.
Cybersecurity pros predict rise of malicious AI
76% of cybersecurity professionals believe the world is very close to encountering malicious AI that can bypass most known cybersecurity measures, according to Enea. 26% see this happening within the next year, and 50% in the next 5 years.
Enterprises see AI as a worthwhile investment
While AI is still in its early growth phase, there is enough value to enterprises to make AI a good investment, particularly for industries that can take a competitive advantage form personalizing customer experience, fraud detection, optimizing sales and marketing, and improving real-time decision making.
Privacy concerns cast a shadow on AI’s potential for software development
95% of senior technology executives said they prioritize privacy and protection of intellectual property when selecting an AI tool. 32% of respondents were ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ concerned about introducing AI into the software development lifecycle, and of those, 39% cited they are concerned that AI-generated code may introduce security vulnerabilities, and 48% said they are concerned that AI-generated code may not be subject to the same copyright protection as human-generated code.
Cybercriminals turn to AI to bypass modern email security measures
Cybercriminals have shown rapid adoption of AI tools to their favor with 91.1% of organizations reporting that they have already encountered email attacks that have been enhanced by AI, and 84.3% expecting that AI will continue to be utilized to circumvent existing security systems. Consequently, AI-enabled protections are more essential than ever.
Most security pros turn to unauthorized AI tools at work
97% of security pros believe their organizations are able to identify their use of unauthorized AI tools, and more than 3 in 4 (78%) suspect their organization would put a stop to it if discovered.