Skip to content
Tiatra, LLCTiatra, LLC
Tiatra, LLC
Information Technology Solutions for Washington, DC Government Agencies
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Services
    • IT Engineering and Support
    • Software Development
    • Information Assurance and Testing
    • Project and Program Management
  • Clients & Partners
  • Careers
  • News
  • Contact
 
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Services
    • IT Engineering and Support
    • Software Development
    • Information Assurance and Testing
    • Project and Program Management
  • Clients & Partners
  • Careers
  • News
  • Contact

Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity: Good or Evil?

As I reflect on the biggest technology innovations during my career―the Internet, smartphones, social media―a new breakthrough deserves a spot on that list. Generative AI has taken the world seemingly by storm, impacting everything from software development, to marketing, to conversations with my kids at the dinner table.

At the recent Six Five Summit, I had the pleasure of talking with Pat Moorhead about the impact of Generative AI on enterprise cybersecurity. As with many disruptive innovations, Generative AI holds great promise to deliver fundamentally better outcomes for organizations, while at the same time posing an entirely new set of cybersecurity risks and challenges.

Key Risks from Generative AI

There are three key risks posted by Generative AI in enterprises today:

Sensitive Data Loss: Enterprise users can input sensitive information or other confidential company information into Generative AI systems such as ChatGPT and, intentionally or unintentionally, expose confidential information and put the reputation of their company at risk.

Copyright Issues: Enterprise employees use Generative AI to create content such as source code, images, and documents. However, one cannot know the origin of the content provided by ChatGPT, and the content may not be copyright free, posing risk to the organization.

Abuse by Attackers: There have also been concerns raised that attackers will leverage Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT to develop novel new attacks. While Generative AI can make attackers more efficient at certain tasks, it cannot, as of today, create entirely new attacks. Generative AI systems are information content development tools, not robots — you can ask such a tool to “Tell me all the common ways to infect a machine,” but you cannot ask it to “Infect these machines at this company.”

Protecting the Enterprise

So, what can security professionals do to properly safeguard the use of Generative AI tools by their employees?

First, every organization must determine their own policies for use of Generative AI within their environment, e.g., what is the best approach for enabling the business while applying appropriate security controls. Given that we are still in the early stages of Generative AI, organizations should regularly review and evolve their policies as needed.

Symantec Enterprise Cloud enables our customers to enforce their specific Generative AI policies. Some organizations have decided to ban the use of these tools for the time being, as they work through the issues, and they leverage our Secure Web Gateway to enforce such controls. Others allow the use of Generative AI, with caution, and use Symantec’s DLP Cloud for real-time granular inspection of submitted data and remediation so that no confidential information is exposed. Our DLP Cloud has out-of-the-box templates that allow blocking of data across key regulatory categories, e.g., HIPAA, PCI, PII, etc. Organizations can also create new DLP policies for Generative AI or leverage their existing policies. Please see our Symantec Enterprise Blog and our Generative AI Protection Demo for more details.

Organizations should also consider providing explicit, documented, requirements on the obligation of every employee to validate output from Generative AI tools for accuracy, copyright compliance, and compliance with overall company policies.

We do expect attackers to eventually use Generative AI to create and deliver new threats much more efficiently. So, organizations must be extremely vigilant about ensuring that their overall cybersecurity posture including information, threat, network, and email tools can handle this increased attacker sophistication. To-date, Generative AI is unable to create entirely novel attack techniques that have not previously been created by humans. So, our Symantec products are well tuned to catch these attacks, and we also use Generative AI as part of building our defenses for customers.

AI vs. AI

Given that Generative AI tools are freely available to both the attackers and the defenders (cybersecurity companies), there are understandable concerns about how such an “arms race” may evolve.

Over time, Generative AI tools will surely improve and there may be a time in the future where such tools can generate and execute entirely new attacks on specifically targeted organizations. At the same time, security companies will be able to leverage such tools to super-charge their  defenses. At Symantec, we are investigating the use of Generative AI across every product line to improve our protection and make the day-to-day jobs of security professionals easier. Over time, we could leverage Generative AI in our products to optimize customer-specific security policies, to quickly generate remediation instructions, to summarize technical security information for SoC analysts, and perform many other critical activities.

We believe that whoever has the most computing power will ultimately have the advantage here. The massive computing power used by OpenAI to develop ChatGPT has been a key factor in the early success of this tool. We feel that security companies will invest appropriately in compute power and research to keep the defenders ahead in this race.

Where do we go from here?

As we’ve seen with other disruptive technologies, it is impossible to predict how the use of Generative AI will develop over time. Social media started as a tool to help people stay connected with friends and family, via their desktop and laptop computers, nobody imagined all the ways in which its use would evolve.

Similarly, Generative AI is transforming our personal and work lives. Just as with other groundbreaking technologies that preceded it, the Internet, smartphones, and social media, Generative AI will usher in a new set of cybersecurity and privacy concerns. Enabling organizations to benefit from the full power of Generative AI, while protecting them from the associated risks, will surely drive a new wave of cybersecurity innovation. At Symantec, we are fully investing to be at the cutting edge of this space.

To learn more, read our Symantec Enterprise Blog and our Generative AI Protection Demo.

About Rob Greer

Broadcom Software

Rob Greer is Vice President and General Manager of the Symantec Enterprise Division at Broadcom (SED). In this role, he is responsible for the go-to-market, product management, product development and cloud service delivery functions.

Artificial Intelligence, Security
Read More from This Article: Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity: Good or Evil?
Source: News

Category: NewsSeptember 12, 2023
Tags: art

Post navigation

PreviousPrevious post:The CTO’s newest hat is greenNextNext post:Zero Trust Security for NIS2 compliance: What you need to know

Related posts

SAS supercharges Viya platform with AI agents, copilots, and synthetic data tools
May 8, 2025
IBM aims to set industry standard for enterprise AI with ITBench SaaS launch
May 8, 2025
Consejos para abordar la deuda técnica
May 8, 2025
Training data: The key to successful AI models
May 8, 2025
Bankinter acelera la integración de la IA en sus operaciones
May 8, 2025
The gen AI at Siemens Mobility making IT more accessible
May 8, 2025
Recent Posts
  • SAS supercharges Viya platform with AI agents, copilots, and synthetic data tools
  • IBM aims to set industry standard for enterprise AI with ITBench SaaS launch
  • Consejos para abordar la deuda técnica
  • Training data: The key to successful AI models
  • Bankinter acelera la integración de la IA en sus operaciones
Recent Comments
    Archives
    • May 2025
    • April 2025
    • March 2025
    • February 2025
    • January 2025
    • December 2024
    • November 2024
    • October 2024
    • September 2024
    • August 2024
    • July 2024
    • June 2024
    • May 2024
    • April 2024
    • March 2024
    • February 2024
    • January 2024
    • December 2023
    • November 2023
    • October 2023
    • September 2023
    • August 2023
    • July 2023
    • June 2023
    • May 2023
    • April 2023
    • March 2023
    • February 2023
    • January 2023
    • December 2022
    • November 2022
    • October 2022
    • September 2022
    • August 2022
    • July 2022
    • June 2022
    • May 2022
    • April 2022
    • March 2022
    • February 2022
    • January 2022
    • December 2021
    • November 2021
    • October 2021
    • September 2021
    • August 2021
    • July 2021
    • June 2021
    • May 2021
    • April 2021
    • March 2021
    • February 2021
    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    Categories
    • News
    Meta
    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.org
    Tiatra LLC.

    Tiatra, LLC, based in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, proudly serves federal government agencies, organizations that work with the government and other commercial businesses and organizations. Tiatra specializes in a broad range of information technology (IT) development and management services incorporating solid engineering, attention to client needs, and meeting or exceeding any security parameters required. Our small yet innovative company is structured with a full complement of the necessary technical experts, working with hands-on management, to provide a high level of service and competitive pricing for your systems and engineering requirements.

    Find us on:

    FacebookTwitterLinkedin

    Submitclear

    Tiatra, LLC
    Copyright 2016. All rights reserved.