Cybercriminals moving faster than feared

Cybercriminals are making full use of artificial intelligence and the latest advances in technology – and all companies must wake up to the full scale of the threat.

In a presentation at the Cayman Captive Forum Theresa Payton chief executive & founder of security company Fortalice warned that attention must be paid to creating proper cybersecurity protocols and best practices.

She pointed out that the internet never sleeps – 90% of internet information is now transmitted via mobile phones, with vast amounts being spent every minute of every day via offerings such as Amazon or shopping apps.

With technology evolving faster than government laws & regulatory rules are responding, hackers and cybercriminals are taking full advantage of the fact that this is happening & using technology to steal data.

According to a poll that Payton quoted, 85% of cybersecurity professionals attributed the acceleration of cybercrime in the past 12 months to bad actors using generative AI.

She also pointed to the recent increase in deepfake AI video cloning, which can create videos of people using overlays of images of other people. Voice cloning is also being used as well, with criminals using scraps of recordings to create fake messages supposedly from people. This can be a worrying for those companies that use voices as a security check.

Synthetic bots can be used to pose as people and she urged employers that are hiring people that they met online to always meet people face to face / check identity.

Payton also warned that ransomware criminals will get more sophisticated and predicted that they will upscale their abilities and hack smart facilities to take hostages by locking the doors or turning off the lights or air conditioning. This has implications for disaster planning / resiliency.

Payton warned that 98% of all cyber attacks started with social engineering and that cybercriminals looking for chief executive and senior executive’s personal information, social media posts for information that they can use in their attacks.

She encouraged the usage of verbal pass phrases and greater security, stressed that companies must be more aware of how much data is out there in the internet of things that is now hackable and that it’s vital to put in place policies around AI and to train employees now – and not when it’s too late.