Companies find themselves in the middle of a chess game with cybercriminals using artificial intelligence (AI). While AI offers countless opportunities to drive innovation and efficiency across industries, it also brings with it a new breed of cyber threats.

IT experts report that cybercriminals are increasingly using AI and GenAI to carry out complex attacks faster and on a larger scale.

Security professionals must work hard to stay one step ahead of criminals. GenAI-driven attacks present unique challenges to organizations. Automated phishing campaigns are becoming more sophisticated and GenAI enables fraudsters to better mimic human behavior. For example, think of very convincing social engineering techniques such as deepfakes, which imitate friends, family or colleagues. At the software level, we also see autonomous malware that adapts and evolves to evade detection. How should organizations respond to this?

Strengthen security hygiene for AI adoption

While there is no magic bullet, it all starts with good security hygiene, especially as companies adopt AI at an ever-increasing pace.

The first step is to ensure a secure IT infrastructure, from product development to final deployment. By building in security measures like multi-factor authentication and role-based access control, you add an additional layer of protection that minimizes vulnerabilities. Continuous monitoring helps to detect attacks in good time and respond quickly.

Logging and monitoring tools play a key role here. Security professionals use this data to identify anomalous behavior that could pose a risk to the organization.

In the event of a security incident, a good recovery plan is essential to restart operations quickly and efficiently and keep disruptions to a minimum.

More and more companies are choosing a zero trust architecture to protect their environments. This approach is based on the principle that no entity inside or outside the network is trusted unless it is authenticated. Using Zero Trust reduces the risk of cyberattacks as only verified activities are allowed.

Implementing AI also requires tight control over corporate data, especially for AI systems that use the public cloud. Strong data security and governance are the prerequisite for any AI security strategy.

The power of AI-based security

Once you’ve built a strong security foundation, it’s time to leverage the technology threat actors use: AI. By using AI-based security solutions, companies can increase their resilience to cyber threats.

AI-based security consists of solutions that can detect and respond to threats both proactively and reactively. Equipping security teams with tools that leverage machine learning and machine learning technologies can identify and combat threats more quickly. This strengthens the organization’s overall security posture.

Proactively, AI can help continuously monitor network traffic, user behavior, and system logs and detect suspicious patterns that could indicate malicious activity. This early detection and prevention is crucial to limiting potential damage from cyberattacks. AI learns and adapts to new challenges, helping IT and security teams stay one step ahead of criminals, even as they refine their tactics and discover new vulnerabilities. This allows companies to develop a tailored security strategy that is effective against the threats in their industry.

Unfortunately, even the most secure systems cannot always prevent all attacks. In such cases, AI can also support the recovery process by automating incident response. From threat prevention to data recovery to forensic analysis, AI can limit the impact of attacks and speed up the recovery process.

The human factor in AI security

In addition to building a strong security foundation, companies must recognize that employees are their first line of defense. Every employee should have a basic understanding of how AI makes threats more sophisticated, how to detect them, and what to do if something goes wrong. This is becoming increasingly important as attackers use sophisticated spoofing attacks such as deepfakes, making social engineering attacks even more convincing. Security professionals also need role-specific AI training so they know how malicious actors can use the technology.

The cybersecurity landscape is constantly evolving. Organizations that prioritize AI-based security and a culture of continuous learning are best positioned to navigate the evolving threat landscape. With a proactive and adaptive approach to security, organizations can confidently harness the transformative power of AI and build a safer future.

This is a contribution from Koen Segers, Managing Direct BeLux at Dell Technologies. You can find more information about their solutions here.