The AI increase is amplifying dangers throughout enterprise knowledge estates and cloud environments, based on cybersecurity professional Liat Hayun.
In an interview with TechRepublic, Hayun, VP of product administration and analysis of cloud safety at Tenable, suggested organisations to prioritise understanding their threat publicity and tolerance, whereas prioritising tackling key issues like cloud misconfigurations and defending delicate knowledge.
She famous that whereas enterprises stay cautious, AI’s accessibility is accentuating sure dangers. Nevertheless, she defined that CISOs in the present day are evolving into enterprise enablers — and AI might in the end function a robust software for bolstering safety.
How AI is affecting cybersecurity, knowledge storage
TechRepublic: What’s altering within the cybersecurity setting because of AI?
Liat: To start with, AI has turn into way more accessible to organisations. When you look again 10 years in the past, the one organisations creating AI needed to have this specialised knowledge science staff that had PhDs in knowledge science and statistics to have the ability to create machine studying and AI algorithms. AI has turn into a lot simpler for organisations to create; it’s nearly identical to introducing a brand new programming language or new library into their setting. So many extra organisations — not simply giant organisations like Tenable and others — but additionally any start-ups can now leverage AI and introduce that into their merchandise.
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The second factor: AI requires a variety of knowledge. So many extra organisations want to gather and retailer larger volumes of information, which additionally typically has larger ranges of sensitivity. Earlier than, my streaming service would have solely saved only a few particulars on me. Now, perhaps my geography issues, as a result of they’ll create extra particular suggestions based mostly on that, or my age and my gender, and so forth. As a result of they’ll now use this knowledge for his or her enterprise functions — to generate extra enterprise — they’re now way more motivated to retailer that knowledge in larger volumes and with rising ranges of sensitivity.
TechRepublic: Is that feeding into rising utilization of the cloud?
Liat: If you wish to retailer a variety of knowledge, it’s a lot simpler to do this within the cloud. Each time you determine to retailer a brand new kind of information, it will increase the amount of information you’re storing. You don’t should go inside your knowledge middle and order new volumes of information to put in. You simply click on, and bam, you might have a brand new knowledge retailer location. So the cloud has made it a lot simpler to retailer knowledge.
These three parts type a form of circle that feeds itself. As a result of if it’s simpler to retailer knowledge, you possibly can improve extra AI capabilities, and then you definately’re motivated to retailer much more knowledge, and so forth. In order that’s what occurred on the planet in the previous few years — since LLMs have turn into a way more accessible, widespread functionality for organisations — introducing challenges throughout all these three verticals.
Understanding the safety dangers of AI
TechRepublic: Are you seeing particular cybersecurity dangers rise with AI?
Liat: Using AI in organisations, in contrast to the usage of AI by particular person folks internationally, remains to be in its early phases. Organisations need to make it possible for they’re introducing it in a manner that, I might say, doesn’t create any pointless threat or any excessive threat. So by way of statistics, we nonetheless solely have just a few examples, and they don’t seem to be essentially an excellent illustration as a result of they’re extra experimental.
One instance of a threat is AI being skilled on delicate knowledge. That’s one thing we’re seeing. It’s not as a result of organisations usually are not being cautious; it’s as a result of it’s very tough to separate delicate knowledge from non-sensitive knowledge and nonetheless have an efficient AI mechanism that’s skilled on the proper knowledge set.
The second factor we’re seeing is what we name knowledge poisoning. So, even you probably have an AI agent that’s being skilled on non-sensitive knowledge, if that non-sensitive knowledge is publicly uncovered, as an adversary, as an attacker, I can insert my very own knowledge into that publicly uncovered, publicly accessible knowledge storage and have your AI say issues that you just didn’t intend it to say. It’s not this all-knowing entity. It is aware of what it’s seen.
TechRepublic: How ought to organisations weigh the safety dangers of AI?
Liat: First, I might ask how organisations can perceive the extent of publicity they’ve, which incorporates the cloud, AI, and knowledge … and every little thing associated to how they use third-party distributors, and the way they leverage totally different software program of their organisation, and so forth.
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The second half is, how do you determine the important exposures? So if we all know it’s a publicly accessible asset with a high-severity vulnerability to it, that’s one thing that you just in all probability need to tackle first. But it surely’s additionally a mix of the impression, proper? In case you have two points which are very related, and one can compromise delicate knowledge and one can not, you need to tackle that first [issue] first.
You additionally should know which steps to take to deal with these exposures with minimal enterprise impression.
TechRepublic: What are some massive cloud safety dangers you warn in opposition to?
Liat: There are three issues we normally advise our prospects.
The primary one is on misconfigurations. Simply due to the complexity of the infrastructure, complexity of the cloud, and all of the applied sciences it offers, even for those who’re in a single cloud setting — however particularly for those who’re going multi-cloud — the possibilities of one thing turning into a difficulty simply because it wasn’t configured appropriately remains to be very excessive. In order that’s undoubtedly one factor I might concentrate on, particularly when introducing new applied sciences like AI.
The second is over-privileged entry. Many individuals suppose their organisation is tremendous safe. But when your own home is a fort, and also you’re giving your keys out to everybody round you, that’s nonetheless a difficulty. So extreme entry to delicate knowledge, to important infrastructure, is one other space of focus. Even when every little thing is configured completely and also you don’t have any hackers in your setting, it introduces extra threat.
The side folks take into consideration essentially the most is to determine malicious or suspicious exercise as early because it occurs. That is the place AI might be taken benefit of; as a result of if we leverage AI instruments inside our safety instruments inside our infrastructure, we will use the truth that they’ll have a look at a variety of knowledge, they usually can do that basically quick, to have the ability to additionally determine suspicious or malicious behaviors in an setting. So we will tackle these behaviors, these actions, as early as doable earlier than something important is compromised.
Implementing AI ‘too good of a possibility to overlook out on’
TechRepublic: How are CISOs approaching the dangers you might be seeing with AI?
Liat: I’ve been within the cybersecurity business for 15 years now. What I really like seeing is most safety specialists, most CISOs, are in contrast to what they was once like a decade in the past. Versus being a gatekeeper, versus saying, “No, we will’t use this as a result of it’s dangerous,” they’re asking themselves, “How can we use this and make it much less dangerous?” Which is an superior development to see. They’re turning into extra of an enabler.
TechRepublic: Are you seeing the nice aspect of AI, in addition to the dangers?
Liat: Organisations must suppose extra about how they’re going to introduce AI, reasonably than pondering “AI is just too dangerous proper now”. You possibly can’t do this.
Organisations that don’t introduce AI within the subsequent couple of years will simply keep behind. It’s a tremendous software that may profit so many enterprise use instances, internally for collaboration and evaluation and insights, and externally, for the instruments we will present our prospects. There’s simply too good of a possibility to overlook out on. If I may help organisations obtain that mindset the place they are saying, “OK, we will use AI, however we simply must take these dangers under consideration,” I’ve finished my job.”
