Is AI on Batman's side or on Joker's side?

Also, spoiler alert. Your body-guard is not your body double. Leave the couch. In an age where Cyber-insurers also look at security maturity before they undertake new enterprises, where security fatigue is a bitter reality, where the grey-matter of LLMs can easily be conned by benign chatter, and where AI is turning as much into a Robin as into a Harley Quinn - and with equal speed and probability - whose side is AI on? Philippa Cogswell, Managing Partner, Unit 42, Asia Pacific & Japan, Palo Alto Networks helps us unravel these complex plot lines.

- By Pratima H

PHILIPPA COGSWELL

Managing Partner, Unit 42, Asia Pacific & Japan, Palo Alto Networks

Now that AI is being used for both offence and defence - and Quantum is also coming in soonwhat do you make of these new threat contours?

We look at trends every year and we have seen a rise in speed, scale and sophistication of threats. I have been in this industry for 20 years and we have talked of this narrative a lot, but today the 'time to react' and 'time to respond' have changed drastically. In 2021 data, the median time from compromise to exfiltration of data was nine days, by 2023 it was reduced to two days. When we see more AI and automation ahead, this time window can be reduced even more. Historically, phishing has been the number one vector. In the last 12-18 months, there has been a shift in public-facing vulnerabilities- and now what is exposed and what is leveraged are getting interesting. We are seeing a lot of sophistication- criminal and ransomware groups understand how security and IT teams are functioning- and unfortunately, they are in the mix of communication amidst third-party responders.

IF UNSAFE CONTENT IS EMBEDDED ALONGSIDE BENIGN TOPICS, IT IS POSSIBLE TO TRICK THE LLM INTO INADVERTENTLY GENERATING HARMFUL CONTENT.

Please zoom in on AI here.

It's quite interesting and attackers are not labelling 'powered by Al' yet so we do not necessarily know for sure if they are using AI. But in some instances, it's quite clear. Some examples we are researching and reporting on, corroborate this, and even our red teams and ethical hacking teams - show the use of AI.