ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AND YOUR DIGITAL SAFETY
Dear Valued Customer. You will not have to be worrying about fictive emails because it is invariably true that they will be very simple to spot.
If only.
Two topics have consistently been in the headlines recently: cyber breaches, and artificial intelligence (for clarity, this article was not written by Chat GPT). It’s perhaps not unsurprising that the two topics are interlinked. One in three businesses spots an attempted cyber-attack each year, according to government figures, and these attacks are increasingly sophisticated. They’re facilitated by AI, which brings the ability to construct compelling and grammatically-correct communication. And with emails being the primary entry point for attacks, we’re going to have to shift our expectations of easily-spotted scams.
Behind the scenes, artificial intelligence is increasingly democratising the ability to write code, as well as understanding how successful attacks might work. True, it often comes with inbuilt protection to stop it doing bad things, but we’re probably not betraying confidence to say that there ways around it. It might not want to inform me about the most successful ways to breach a company, for example, but it’s far more forthcoming if I ask it about the most common attacks that I should guard against. And how they work. So: not just better-phrased scams, but potentially, more of them.
Lastly, and moving to a world that might seem rather fantastical: AI and so-called “deep-fake” technology will soon require us to be much more circumspect about a wider variety of communication. Looking out for attachments alone, simply won’t be enough. AI can reproduce voices based on 3-5 second clips, and just this month the Guardian was reporting on the story of a US family who were contacted with a ransom demand for their daughter, who was seemingly on the phone and in the background as part of the kidnapper’s call. In reality, she was perfectly safe, and elsewhere.
What we’re not suggesting is that AI is bad – or good – but reams have already been written about its impact as a disruptive force. That’s equally valid when we consider its influence on the world of cyber security and fraud, where “learning by your mistakes” is not a sound strategy. That’s why the South West Cyber Resilience Centre provides free and regular updates for members of our community, about what’s changing – so that you can stay briefed, and stay safer. As a police-owned and Home Office funded business, we’re here to protect businesses and charities against the threat of cybercrime, and the vast majority of what we do is entirely free of charge. Pictured below is the team with one of our newest members, from a small business in Cheltenham, and the local police and crime commissioner.
To join the Little Interior Co and our wider community of over a thousand members, visit our website at www.swcrc.co.uk/membership, and we’ll keep you up to date every month.
