Artificial Intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming a hot talking topic around the world. With a rapid advancement in the technology behind AI, it’s important that businesses worldwide are aware of the risks that come with AI and how they can affect your organisation.
One of the biggest risks for businesses worldwide regarding AI is the number of security risks that come with AI advancement. With AI being such a powerful tool for a multitude of purposes, the dangers of AI usage within organisations and uses of AI for damaging or nefarious purposes is inevitable — and companies need to know the risks that they could face.
In this article, we’re going to go over the top 4 security risks associated with AI, as well as how you can go about mitigating these risks and protecting your organisation.
Top 4 Security Risks Associated with AI
AI-powered Cyberattacks
Cyberattacks have always been a massive risk for any organisation. It’s no secret that there are individuals and organisations out there who want to use the power of technology to cripple organisations and cause damage, but AI increases this risk greatly.
AI can be used to boost the ability of cyberattackers in a few different ways —
- Making Attacks More Potent: Using AI, you can make cyberattacks more potent and difficult to be detected by filters and detection programs, making them more likely to do damage.
- Creating New Attacks: AI can be used to create fake data to impersonate individuals and create confusion, or even falsely gain credentials to access parts of an organisation that would otherwise be locked away.
- Automating and Scaling Attacks: AI lets attackers automate and scale attacks massively with low effort, meaning that they can do lots of different attacks at a massive scale without needing to exert many resources — meaning that the level of attacks might reach an unprecedented level.
Because of these, it’s important to be aware of the power that AI has enabled attacks with and to prepare for them, as these attacks can be quite potent and could cause a lot of damage if your organisation is hit by one.
Vulnerabilities in AI Systems
While AI systems are incredibly intelligent, they’re not immune to vulnerabilities and other problems.
The main issue with AI systems is that if the AI’s data pool is changed, it can lead to a wholly different outcome to otherwise. This is known as data poisoning, and can be used to mess up whole AI-based systems. By injecting malicious data into the data pool, you can completely change what the AI is outputting and use that to manipulate information.
Another vulnerability is the supply chain. AI development usually integrates third party libraries, meaning that any vulnerabilities in that chain will affect your organisation as well. This is why making sure that you’re vigilant of the tools used within your AI implementation is vital.
Sensitive Data Protection
AI systems require access to personal information and data to work effectively, and so inadequate safeguarding of this data can lead to a possible data breach and sensitive data falling into the wrong hands.
Using this data, malicious actors can gain access to an organisation’s systems and take advantage of these vulnerabilities to cripple or even hold an organisation hostage, and so being aware of the data that you’re using within your AI implementation is important.
Shadow IT
Shadow IT is the use of IT within organisations without the oversight of the IT department, meaning that those applications can potentially cause problems within your organisation. Similarly, Shadow AI is the use of AI within your organisation in a similar fashion — without prior authorisation.
Generative AI makes Shadow AI a much larger problem than Shadow IT. Where Shadow IT only really has risks from the development stage, generative AI has risks whenever it’s used — creating a realistic risk of data exposure due to the great amount of discoverability that has come with AI.
AI Risk Mitigation
The best way to fight against the risks that AI bring into your organisation is to fight fire with fire — using AI powered tools to be able to help protect your organisation.
There are a couple of different effective ways to do so —
- AI Powered Detection: Using AI to power your threat detection capabilities will allow you to detect threats far before they become an issue, meaning you can stamp them out. Tools like Microsoft Security Copilot use AI to do so, giving you powerful options to ensure that you can stop threats quickly.
- AI Security Analytics: Analytics will help you collect data throughout your organisation and investigate new threats and vulnerabilities with ease. Microsoft Security Copilot and Microsoft Sentinel are two of the many tools that give you powerful analytics capabilities to protect your organisation.
The other ways that you can mitigate AI risks is by being vigilant, keeping your organisation’s security hygiene high, and educating people throughout your institution.
By educating others in your organisation, you can ensure everyone is aware of the risks and challenges that you’ll face, and ensure that people are doing their bit to make it difficult for any vulnerabilities to present themselves.
How We Can Help
AI is a new technology that many organisations are using and considering as part of their strategies. However, the rise of AI has a lot of different consequences for every business — consequences that every organisation should be aware of.
By ensuring that you know how AI could create risks for your business, you can easily take steps to mitigate these risks and ensure that you’re protected. Using a mix of AI tools and a high standard of security throughout your organisation will let you take these challenges head on and ensure a high standard of security throughout your institution.
If you’re looking to get started in taking steps to enhance your organisation’s security but don’t know where to start, get in touch with us today and see how our experts can help you.
