In 2024, the cyber threat landscape is evolving rapidly, with artificial intelligence playing an increasingly central role in both defense and offensive cyber.
Shadow AI and Cybersecurity: Organizations are faced with "shadow AI", or AI solutions used without official authorization. This phenomenon poses significant cybersecurity challenges, as generative AI tools could be exploited to increase productivity but also create risks.
In “shadow AI,” generative AI tools are used without official permission. A concrete example would be the use of AI software to analyze sensitive company data or create custom algorithms that have not been approved or verified by the IT department, increasing the risk of data breaches or leaks.
Threats to Personal Assistants: Personal assistants will become targets for cyberattacks, including prompt injection and inference attacks, taking advantage of their growing popularity. Attacks targeting personal assistants through techniques such as prompt injection and inference attacks exploit their ability to execute commands based on voice or text input. A specific example could be a phishing attack in which an attacker tricks a voice assistant to access sensitive information or perform malicious actions by exploiting vulnerabilities in input handling
“Downstream” Security and Zero Trust: Companies will turn to downstream security approaches such as Zero Trust to address the ineffectiveness of email defenses against the malicious use of AI.
Attacks on Hybrid Environments: An increase in attacks is expected, especially in hybrid cloud-on-premise environments, targeting digital credentials and identities, using social engineering and zero day vulnerabilities. Attacks in hybrid environments manifest themselves through the exploitation of complexities and vulnerabilities specific to configurations that mix cloud and on-premise infrastructures. A concrete example would be an attack that exploits discrepancies in security policies between the cloud and on-premises to gain unauthorized access to data or distribute malware
Growth in AI Attacks and Cyber Fraud: The exponential increase in AI-based attacks and cyber fraud, including ransomware attacks and phishing, signals the critical importance of AI in cybersecurity. Preparing for and responding appropriately to such attacks is essential to protecting organizations.
Deepfakes and Entertainment Scams: Advanced technologies such as voice deepfakes and scams related to new movie releases and video games are among the main threats of 2024. The spread of these sophisticated methods requires greater attention from users.
GenAI Attacks: Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) will transform phishing tactics, making attacks difficult to recognize due to the elimination of typical indicators such as grammatical or formatting errors.
Protecting against these new threats requires a holistic approach to cybersecurity, which includes continuously updating defenses, training users and adopting strategies such as Zero Trust. Awareness and preparation are critical keys to mitigating the risks associated with the malicious use of AI.
