Build Cyber Immunity Against Hackers & Deep Fakes Using AI

AI can truly stop cyber attackers from making your business vulnerable by using technologies like deep fakes to break into the business's systems.

When companies were dealing with the COVID-19 chaos, AI was guarding all the intellectual property against cyberattackers. But as days pass, cyberattacks are finding innovative ways too. So now is the time organizations should prioritize building a thorough cyber immunity into their processes.

Between 1st September 2019 and 31st August 2020, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has handled 723 cases, more than the average of 602 cases over the last three years. According to analysts in the UK intelligence, over a quarter of cases that they have dealt with involved criminals exploiting the pandemic. Cyberattackers have also targeted COVID-19 vaccine research centres, like how a Russian hacking group was accused of targeting centres across the UK, US, and Canada.

With the pandemic stretching out for the foreseeable future, "what will their next move be?" is a crucial question to ask to prevent such cyberattacks.

According to Richard Starnes, the Chief Security Strategist at Capgemini, many companies, who planned AI into their business strategies after 5-6 years in the future need to restrategize this timeframe. This comes as a result of the spike in cases that left IT teams down in the dumps, drowning in several TBs of data that they have to monitor to detect possible attacks.

When Time Becomes A Ticking Bomb

If organizations don't realize the urgency of the situation, cybercriminals will leave the IT teams behind and innovate faster. In fact, cybercriminals are already adept at using AI to initiate their attacks. In 2021, there's no other way for cyber analysts to delay the adoption of AI. Employing SOAR (security orchestration, automation and response) processes will allow companies to collect security data from different sources for quicker and more accurate incident analysis. Through these intelligent techniques, cyber analysts and IT teams will be better equipped to control the growing threats.

The beginning of 2021 saw deep fake technology making rounds and fascinating people with its capabilities. The same technology might pose a threat to businesses, as hackers are learning to create fakes using AI and machine learning. Along with deep fake, audio technologies, which has seen an increase in adoption owing to remote learning will also pose danger for businesses. Such sophisticated technologies are harder to detect, putting businesses at the possible risk of financial losses.

During the course of this pandemic, social engineering methods like gathering stolen online information to carry on social profiling (creating fake identities of the targets) is also increasing. Because the world is going through a digital transformation, IT systems will see the burden if these plans go through.

What's The Best Plan?

One is to un-cut the slashed AI budgets from their cybersecurity strategies and the second is to adopt zero trust policies. Zero trust policies treat every entry into the business network as a threat and do the needful to verify its intentions. With strong multi factor authentication, strict identity governance, and a long lifecycle, effective threat detection will take place across all the digital intellectual properties of businesses.

In 2020, cyber attackers took advantage of the physical-to-remote-working chaos and attacked e-commerce systems, financial services, healthcare, and many other industries. To counter that, in 2021, organizations should leverage AI to augment with humans and machines to come up with innovative solutions powered by artificial intelligence to break the attacker's plans. Using AI technology will also help spot deep fakes, along with concrete zero trust practices.