Securing the future: AI-supported cyber security strategies

Among other things, two topics were hotly deba­ted: the impact of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence on cyber­se­cu­rity and on soft­ware deve­lo­p­ment. Firstly, cyber­se­cu­rity is about how best to proceed in a rapidly evol­ving threat land­scape. — This is about how to strike a balance between inno­va­tion and secu­rity, using AI as ‘fuel’ in an ever-chan­ging cyber arms race. 

Secu­rity experts believe that AI can now play a role at every stage of the attack chain. And atta­ckers are test­ing every avenue to see where they can take the most advan­tage of gene­ra­tive AI. — Cyber­se­cu­rity is a man-made problem. 

AI has “demo­cra­ti­zed” hack­ing, making indi­vi­dual atta­ckers as powerful as nation states, while old secu­rity tools like VPNs have become funda­men­tal vulnerabi­li­ties instead of provi­ding protec­tion. The secu­rity mana­gers at Zsca­ler , for exam­ple, Sanjit Gang­uli and Akshay Grover, warn urgen­tly: “If you are reacha­ble, you are vulnerable!” This is where a zero-trust archi­tec­ture can drasti­cally reduce attack surfaces in this recent AI-powered threat land­scape. A zero-trust archi­tec­ture is an IT secu­rity concept that assu­mes that no user, device or network is inher­ently trustworthy. 

Hackers have expan­ded their arse­nal and are brin­ging deepf­akes into the cyber­se­cu­rity battle. Compa­nies cannot afford to rely on the autho­ri­ties for protec­tion. They must now deve­lop their own multi-laye­red defense stra­tegy. But what does this look like? — The corner­stone must be compli­ance with regu­la­ti­ons. But if employees regu­larly open the door to hackers, it does­n’t matter how much compa­nies spend on new technologies. 

Compa­nies must ther­e­fore invest in trai­ning and informing their employees about the threat of deepf­akes and how to defend against them. An email news­let­ter is not enough — regu­lar, manda­tory trai­ning should be provi­ded. This could include simu­la­ted phis­hing exer­ci­ses with deepf­akes or inter­ac­tive work­shops where employees are trai­ned to reco­gnize red flags. There must be quick inter­nal report­ing mecha­nisms so that employees can reach specia­li­zed IT teams as soon as a threat is detected. 

About John Cranmer

John is a specia­list in the Hg Value Crea­tion Tech­no­logy team. Prior to joining Hg, he spent four years leading cyber secu­rity func­tions at both HS2 and Go-Ahead Group. — John gradua­ted from the Univer­sity of Birming­ham with a BSc in Physics and Astro­phy­sics and moved into cyber secu­rity straight from university. 

Hg Capi­tal is a leading private equity inves­tor in Euro­pean and trans­at­lan­tic soft­ware and services companies.

www.hgcapital.com