Artificial intelligence is widely being promoted by cybersecurity leaders amid the use of breakthroughs in intelligent threat detection technologies across major organizations in the face of an epidemic of highly advanced cyberattacks. As identity-related attacks represent one-third of all breaches in 2024, and the cost of a global data breach reaches a new record of $4.88 million, cybersecurity professionals note that AI is the key to both defense and attack in current cybersecurity trends.
Organizations embrace AI despite cybersecurity gaps
As revealed lately, there is an instance of an eye-opening paradox when it comes to enterprise technology adoption, with 72 percent of organizations adopting AI in at least one of their business functions in 2024, as shown by IBM data published by Imprivata. But as Cybersecurity Dive reports, most companies are excited about the introduction of new technologies, yet they fail to take (or even overlook) the basic security measures that can safeguard their businesses against the known risks.
The Unisys Cloud Insights Report was quite alarming with regard to the gaps in the most basic security players at the organizational level. Only a little over half have instituted zero-trust network architecture, and only slightly more have given much consideration to post-incident recovery planning. The most troubling is that only 42 percent are using or intend to use digital identity and access management services, which are deemed the key to the prevention of credential-based attacks.
This is the way AI changes threat detection capabilities
Traditional AI and machine learning can also be invaluable in helping to discover patterns of risky access and behaviour and anomalies in access logs that might represent a potential threat. Joel Burleson-Davis of Privata reemphasized the importance of AI and automation as the means of ensuring that organizations can stay abreast of the increasing complexity of cyber threats.
To make this possible, Cybercriminals use AI to intensify attacks
The risk situation is very different because cybercriminals are employing AI to intensify their attacks. Generative AI is helping threat actors create more persuasive phishing messages, use deepfakes to enable social engineering attacks, and take advantage of blind spots in visibility and governance mechanisms, organizations.
Burleson-Davis added that as companies use AI to beef up their security, it is also making the threat environment move faster by giving the same help or advantage, providing more places where bad actors can hack and steal sensitive information. This twofold character of AI poses a challenge as well as an opportunity to cybersecurity professionals. Increasingly, it is cybercriminals using stolen credentials that log in instead of security personnel that hack into the networks, and this trend will lead to identity-driven attacks being 30 of all breaches in 2024.
The governance of responsible AI is mandatory
Cybersecurity professionals emphasize using AI responsibly, as well as its management, since both of these aspects become essential as AI enters key infrastructure and modern society. Instead, the question that needs to be answered is how to scale and govern AI responsibly rather than asking whether to embrace AI at all, according to Burleson-Davis.
Security experts orient organizations to change their security approaches to meet challenges and opportunities in growing AI. Effective compliance controls, zero-trust architecture, and persistent monitoring are emerging as key cyber resiliency methodologies in an AI-driven world, where it is clear that effective cybersecurity strategies must consider both proactive and reactive capabilities that exist in the AI context.
The AI-enhanced cybersecurity market is at a crisis point in the sense that it is a source of both the most adept defense mechanism and the most advanced attack avenue. In the wake of organizations trying to jump directly to AI solutions and leaving the fundamentals of security behind, experts stress that success requires an approach that combines the best of what is new with responsible practices.