NetworkTigers discusses AI risks and rewards in cybersecurity.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the new frontier of cybersecurity. According to the Turing theory of machine learning, AI is capable of mimicking crucial elements of human intelligence, such as decision-making, communication, and analysis. However, AI also comes with risks and rewards.
Risks of AI
Artificial intelligence is highlighted as a key risk to world safety and stability in the Munich Security Report 2024 and the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2024. AI has the potential to be an immense destabilizing force worldwide as deepfakes become both more believable and more prevalent. AI-generated deepfakes have the potential to accurately mimic a person’s voice, gestures, and speech patterns. AI phishing emails and messages can be more credible than any human-generated attempt. AI phishing has been found to largely lack spelling errors, awkward phrasing, and other common red flags that alert real human users to the risk.
Other concerns about AI include:
- Lack of domain expertise. AI remains a developing field and one that is largely led by a few organizations that are building experience as they go. Cybersecurity professionals must be trained to vet AI milestones, retrain learning models, and adapt to the shifting field in real-time. Specialization is crucial, and many businesses that seek to implement early AI models may lack cybersecurity personnel who are trained in domain expertise for AI.
- Lack of labeled data. AI has been known to generate false positives when detecting patterns. In one example, an AI database was used to detect cell cancer clusters. However, with a lack of labeled data (in this case, examples of healthy cells), AI has been known to label all images it receives as cancerous. Simply put, AI can learn incorrect patterns based on the data that it is fed. This makes data poisoning attacks, or corruption of input data, of particular risk to relying upon machine learning.
- AI hallucination. In a phenomenon known as “AI hallucination,” machine learning models have shown themselves to be biased and potentially gullible in response to leading questions. At this stage in development, AI must be consistently double-checked and subjected to human screening, limiting its potential for unencumbered use.
- Lack of explainability. AI models can detect threats but cannot always explain why they occur. Human expertise is still necessary to connect the dots and identify specific weaknesses in networks.
- Prompt injection attack. Large language models (LLMs) have been shown to be particularly susceptible to prompt injection attacks. A prompt injection attack involves a user creating an input that demands the AI model behave in a certain way. One example includes job seekers who add lines in a resumé designed to tell recruitment software to recommend them regardless of the results of their qualifications. This leads to inaccurate results and undermines the positive effects of AI. On a larger scale, AI can be induced to reveal confidential information, generate offensive content, or otherwise act outside of the developer’s interests.
Rewards of AI
Even with all of its risks, companies continue to push onward into the new terrain of artificial intelligence. AI has the potential to utterly transform workflow, improve decision-making processes, redesign infrastructure, and allow human creativity to focus on problem-solving and enhancing the quality of life. Some of the rewards of AI that continue to incentivize development and improvements include:
- Availability. Unlike humans, AI does not need sleep, breaks, or business hours. AI systems are “always on” across time zones and after hours. AI can create a constant monitoring system that can improve cybersecurity and detect threats in real-time.
- Adaptability. AI can be programmed to adapt more quickly to changes in patterns and threats. For instance, in cybersecurity, most human professionals can only respond to risks that they have learned about and understood. AI, on the other hand, has the potential to recognize any kind of new or unknown pattern before human intelligence can process the change.
- Rapid response. AI automation can respond more quickly to threats and changes. The faster the response, the better the outcome. AI has the capability to respond to perceived incursions, malware, terrorist attacks, and more at a much faster speed than human actors can.
- Enhanced efficiency. Burnout is one of the greatest threats to the human workforce today. According to the American Psychological Association, nearly 3 in 5 employees reported experiencing negative impacts of severe work-related stress. Responses were classified into lack of interest, motivation, and energy (26%), emotional exhaustion (32%), cognitive weariness (36%), physical fatigue (44%) as well as resulting lack of effort at work (19%). AI has the capacity to reduce the strain on human workers and thereby address burnout on a large scale. It also has the capacity to reduce decision-making being made under physical and emotional stress, weariness, and fatigue.
- Improved outcomes. Human beings make emotion-driven decisions, whether we like it or not. AI learning, when implemented correctly, has the capacity to inform our decision-making through less biased analysis. It can also expand the bounds of human knowledge by helping predict evolving patterns, research and discover medical breakthroughs, automate menial chores, and improve our usage of one of the most powerful tools of today, the Internet.
Failing to understand the implications of AI, whether or not you choose to implement it, may take a toll on your business’s efficiency and cybersecurity. AI must be considered in the current and coming digital landscape to remain relevant. AI is in our future, whether we like it or not.
About NetworkTigers
NetworkTigers is the leader in the secondary market for Grade A, seller-refurbished networking equipment. Founded in January 1996 as Andover Consulting Group, which built and re-architected data centers for Fortune 500 firms, NetworkTigers provides consulting and network equipment to global governmental agencies, Fortune 2000, and healthcare companies. www.networktigers.com.
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