These days, it seems as though everyone is talking about AI and its various flavors (think: ChatGPT). The number of headlines about the technology has renewed the conversations regarding its impact on everything from planning vacations to designing next-generation IT infrastructures.
There’s still a lot of speculation, as AI is just now coming into its own, but there is one area in which we are already seeing some real, tangible impact from AI: cybersecurity.
AI a Cybersecurity Tool for Good … and Bad
The Cloud Security Alliance recently released a report that takes a look at some of the ways threat actors are utilizing ChatGPT and other forms of AI to wreak havoc, from increasingly sophisticated phishing campaigns that are almost impossible to detect to the creation of polymorphic code that can change its appearance to evade detection by security scanners.
The threat is real, folks.
That said, organizations can utilize AI and ChatGPT to bolster their defenses, benefitting as much from the technology as their malicious counterparts. The report walks readers through ways in which ChatGPT can be a real boon to security today, not sometime in the future. Simple recognition of malicious code—in other words, asking ChatGPT, ‘What is T1059.001?’ and receiving a detailed description of not only what it is (a technique identifier in the MITRE ATT&CK framework) but also how threat actors are utilizing it—can go a long way for many organizations to improve their security posture. But more complex uses of ChatGPT to improve reconnaissance, test code, improve existing security technologies such as SIEM and SOAR, and more promise to push today’s cybersecurity capabilities well beyond their current boundaries.
The report also includes information on how organizations can securely enable the use of ChatGPT, including Microsoft Azure, which has an Azure Open AI Service of its public cloud.
Raising Awareness
As ChatGPT and other forms of AI continue to evolve, more ways of utilizing the technology—for good and bad—will become apparent. Technology practitioners and decision-makers aren’t waiting, however. A recent article in SC Magazine noted, “A community already primed to be skeptical around modern AI has become fixated on the real potential cybersecurity applications of a machine-learning chatbot.”
Organizations that haven’t considered the impact of AI on your cybersecurity efforts need to shift their focus—and now. It’s important to recognize AI is a tool that can advance the skills of threat actors and security professionals alike. In today’s IT landscape, AI is already proving to be a fundamental and necessary tool to identify, defend and protect.
