Artificial intelligence and quantum computing will continue to advance in 2024, as more and more organizations adopt these cutting edge technologies.
However, this technological explosion is accompanied with an increase in sophisticated cyberthreats. A significant concern is malicious actors’ misuse of generative artificial intelligence — or gen AI. Businesses are facing a number of complex issues: a rise in ransomware attacks and state-sponsored cyber espionage.
Similarly, misuse of technology leads to the development more advanced malware that targets specific systems, software and vulnerabilities.
AI integration will also streamline cyberattacks, reduce costs, and lead to more sophisticated disinformation and phishing campaigns.
Cybercriminals and state actors have already taken advantage of generative artificial intelligence to create phishing campaign, write malicious codes, or identify systems that are vulnerable to be exploited, said Mihoko Mattsubara, Chief Security Strategist at IT Services and Consulting firm NTT.
AI’s flip side in cyber defense
AI will impact cybersecurity strategies and technology by improving detection capabilities and analytical abilities. The result is a more effective defensive response to disinformation and other anomalous behaviors, such as phishing. It will also pave a way for automated and efficient security operations, which addresses workforce challenges.
Cybersecurity professionals also find generative AI useful in automating tasks, data analyses, and vulnerability research. Matsubara said that NTT Security Holdings’ research found that generative AI was the most efficient and accurate way to quickly identify phishing websites.
Nicole Carignan added that Gen AI has opened up the possibility of providing offensive tools for more novice threats actors. Darktrace. The effectiveness of these tools is only as good as their users.
She anticipates that AI will be used throughout the attack cycle in the future. It could be using large language models or natural language processing to understand written languages and craft contextualized spear-phishing emails on a mass scale.
It could also involve using image classification in order to speed up the exfiltration process of sensitive documents after an environment has been compromised and attackers are searching for valuable material.
“AI will make it possible for machines to deploy unique attacks at scale — always on, continuously morphing at machine speed,” Carignan told TechNewsWorld.
Key Trends Towards a Better Security Landscape
AI is expected to have a significant impact on cybercrime behavior and cybersecurity in 2024. NTT Cyber experts see four key trends impacting the security landscape far and wide in this year and beyond.
According to David Beabout, Chief Information Security Officer at NTT, preserving trust in the results of elections will be crucial. In the United States it will be more important than ever to be able to manually verify and log results in order to resolve any issues that may arise.
TechNewsWorld reported that he believes the trend towards resilience and result validation will gain in importance by 2024.
Second, a Zero Trust Framework is the key to better cybersecurity. The security landscape has become increasingly cloud-native. To counter new threats, enhanced authentication methods are needed.
Zero Trust is evolving from a trend into a framework used by many organizations to strengthen their security.
“Zero Trust is no longer a buzzword, but a core concept that organizations will implement to improve their cybersecurity measures,” Taro Hashimoto, CSIS visiting fellow & senior manager of cybersecurity at NTT, told TechNewsWorld.
Quantum Readiness by 2024
NTT’s third cybersecurity forecast for 2024 centers on the quantum threat. Hackers and other threat actors are unlikely to adopt the nascent technology of quantum computing in the new year. It is still important to be prepared for its arrival.
NIST published draft versions for several possible algorithms of post-quantum cryptography.
Kazuhiro GOMI, president and CEO at NTT Research, says that 2024 will be a year of continued preparation for systems and applications to adopt quantum computing.
“While the timing is still uncertain, the need to prepare is real,” he said in a TechNewsWorld interview.
It is difficult to manage encryption security without quantum capabilities. Gomi also added that it is important to plan defenses once such capabilities become more widespread.
Advancement of Cryptography and Encryption
Cyber researchers anticipate that in 2024, cryptography and encryption will continue to explore ways to protect data both at rest as well as on the cloud. The development of advanced cryptographic systems, such as attribute-based encryption (ABE), offers an exciting prospect for adoption in real life.
There are still privacy concerns due to the fact that AI models do not provide any assurances of privacy. Researchers may explore the idea of private interactions with AI models, as these interactions can involve sensitive information that is even more than what conventional search queries require.
Brent Waters of NTT Research’s Cryptography and Information Security (CIS) Lab, who is the director of NTT Research’s cryptography and information-security lab, said that one area of potential interest in the cryptography community would be to expand private searches to include private interactions with AI.
The rapid adoption and utility of large-language models like ChatGPT in various industries has been transformative. Privacy concerns may be holding these technologies back from their full potential. I think that the research community is going to examine the possibilities of private AI interactions,” he told TechNewsWorld.
AI’s influence on Cybersecurity
AI is already having a positive impact on the cybersecurity industry. Piyush Pandey CEO of ERP Security firm said that AI has already added value to the cybersecurity field. Pathlock.
As AI automates more cybersecurity tasks, cybersecurity professionals’ roles will change. They won’t become commodities. He told TechNewsWorld that cybersecurity professionals with a growth-mindset will be more valuable because they can provide practical insights for AI deployment within the company.
Pandey cites the movie “Oppenheimer” to illustrate how the advent of gen AI creates an arms race that’s not unlike the atomic era.
He believes that the growing claims about AI’s importance in security solutions will lead to its increased use in email security in the next year.
He predicted that the field could evolve as quickly as the cloud security solutions did during the pandemic.
