Cybersecurity has become one of the biggest problems for businesses worldwide. The democratization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made it easier for cybercriminals to operate and has allowed them to act with unprecedented speed and efficiency.
According to data from the Unit 42 research unit, there have already been cases of data exfiltration of up to 2.5 terabytes in just 14 hours, which means that companies can no longer afford the almost 6 days it takes on average to contain an attack. These figures are also supported by recent data published in the Allianz Risk Barometer report, which shows that business leaders consider a cyber attack to be the main business risk to combat.
Artificial Intelligence comes in many forms and levels of sophistication. Given this scenario, corporate security teams must leverage their own AI tools to combat this challenging threat landscape, as well as attacks perpetrated using this same technology.
To stay ahead of this new era of malicious actors, organizations must use the most powerful tools at their disposal. For example, at Palo Alto Networks, we have Precision AI across all of our platforms—Strata, Prisma, and Cortex—making it easier and more effective for security teams to contain cyberthreats. Precision AI is a proprietary artificial intelligence system that combines machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL), and generative AI (GenAI) to automate detection, prevention, and remediation with high accuracy.
In parallel, globally established regulation has made cybersecurity a non-negotiable priority for senior management in organizations. Various international regulations EC (4 days), GDPR (3 days) and NIS2 (24-hour “early warning” alert) establish specific times in which organizations must report cybersecurity incidents, ensuring that companies are able to act quickly to mitigate damage and communicate incidents to the competent authorities.
The use of AI in cyber attacks
The first step companies should take is to document all their internal risks from this technology. This may be the most challenging aspect, given the extent of this technology’s use in companies today, but it is also the one that will pay the greatest dividends in terms of cyber resilience.
Attackers typically use AI to perform reconnaissance tasks, extracting information from public sources to identify vulnerabilities. At the same time, they improve their social engineering techniques, creating emails and websites phishing highly sophisticated. This in turn allows them to create malicious code and customize malware without the need for advanced programming skills, facilitating the creation of more effective and difficult-to-detect attacks.
The democratization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made it easier for cybercriminals to operate and has allowed them to act with a speed and efficiency never seen before
In the face of this ever-evolving threat, organizations must take a proactive and adaptive approach to their cyber defense. This includes using AI to detect and analyze threats in real-time, automate security operations, and perform predictive analytics to anticipate potential attacks. Adopting AI technologies is not only essential to keep up with adversaries, but also to stay ahead in the fight against cyber threats.
However, it is always necessary to partner with a trusted cybersecurity leader as well. Tools are only as good as the technology partners behind them. Deploying an AI-enabled cybersecurity platform based on the principle of “simplify, integrate, scale” is a highly effective way to use AI.
Over the past two and a half years, More than 86% of our clients who suffered an attack had some type of legal cost or regulatory, In addition to the cost of our services, over 78% of them suffered recovery costs. In fact, ransomware demands currently range from $3 billion to $50 million, meaning that a serious breach could even result in a company ceasing operations. This data highlights the growing financial burden that cyberattacks place on companies around the world, to the point that some are forced to close their businesses.
Every day we analyze 750 million new and unique incidents, detect 2.3 million new and unique attacks, and block nearly 8.6 billion attacks. Artificial Intelligence can reduce the burden on security teams, improve efficiency, and allow them to focus on more complex and strategic security issues.
Given these new AI-enabled capabilities for cyber attackers, organizations are required to respond in an equally advanced and adaptive manner. By adopting a proactive strategy that incorporates AI, organizations can not only protect themselves against current attacks, but also anticipate future threats, thereby ensuring their operational and financial resilience in an increasingly digitalized and vulnerable environment.
