Mary Ann Miller, VP Evangelist & Fraud Executive Advisor, Prove, on strategic mapping and the right defense.
As AI advances by leaps and bounds, it serves as both a shield and a sword in the ever-evolving battlefield of cyber warfare. While AI empowers companies to fortify their defenses against cyberattacks, it also elevates the sophistication of these very attacks, leaving employees feeling overwhelmed and ill-equipped.
Recent data from EY reveals a staggering 39% of employees currently lack confidence in using AI responsibly, especially Millennial and Gen Z employees. There’s a growing concern that they’ll unknowingly make their employers vulnerable to serious cybersecurity attacks.
However, AI isn’t something to shun, conversely it serves as an incredible opportunity to potentially gain countless competitive advantages. While the previously mentioned concerns are valid, companies can benefit from AI while reducing risk and empowering their employees. In fact, the organizations that foster cultures of awareness and invest in comprehensive training initiatives will be best positioned for success.
Strategic Mapping: The Heart of AI Training and Governance
You can’t govern AI use cases you don’t know exist or those you don’t understand. Building a roadmap of your organization’s vulnerabilities and developing the right defenses for those exposure points is the best place to start. That’s why I highly recommend starting with an AI-specific strategic mapping engagement. It’s a detailed, visual exercise that identifies the functions that connect all of your AI use cases and scenarios. It also brings clarity to your organization’s current usage of AI, as well as any new use cases that might be fitting in the near future based on the nature of your business and any of your organization’s high-level strategies and goals.
Mapping exposure is a detailed process that gets highly technical. However, think of it as an audit of all of the AI tools you use, how they function and how your employees engage with them, the risks they could potentially pose to your networks and systems, whether you use free or paid tools and the nature of their terms and conditions, any vulnerabilities these tools or your own tech stack might have, etc.
It’s also important to consider unusual, malicious attacks that could happen outside of normal business use of AI tools. For example, what if a bad actor at one of your call centers cloned some of your customers’ voices to engage in malicious, fraudulent activity?
What if a bot that has access to the right security responses interacts with your chatbot to gain additional information or to gain illegal access to a customer’s account? What preventative measures could you put into place to avoid these or similar situations?
Unfortunately, many organizations lack the knowledge or expertise to take this critical first step. I recommend reaching out to subject matter experts to map your risk assessment. Then you can present your strategic map to your board or executive management team for both situational awareness and a moment to take action. Once you’ve identified potential attack vectors and other areas of vulnerability, you’ll also be able to create a more comprehensive, relevant, and effective training program for your employees.
Deploying a Holistic Approach to Defense
Finally, once you have key insights and strategies tailored to meet your organization’s unique needs, you’ll be able to address any AI concerns proactively.
Prioritize employee education and make cybersecurity awareness an integral part of your company culture.
Here are a few ways you could make that happen:
- Strategic Mapping: continually mapping AI functions within your organization to integrate governance protocols proactively
- Interactive Training: dynamic training tailored to your organization’s needs, supported by real-world use cases
- Continuous Adaptation: ongoing educational updates to tackle evolving cybersecurity threats so your organization stays ahead of risks
- AI Help Desk: a centralized resource for real-time support, promoting collaboration and proactive problem-solving
- AI Q&A FAQ Document: a comprehensive document to supplement training, providing clarity for common queries
AI will transform business in ways we can’t even begin to imagine. The businesses that get AI governance right and promote safe use will benefit, while those that do not invest in training and governance will lag – the best time to get started is now.
