How Generative AI Will Transform Cybersecurity

 

Microsoft last week announced that, just as it did with .NET years ago, it will be putting generative AI into everything, including security.

Back in the .NET days, I joked that Microsoft was so over the top with .Net that the bathrooms were renamed Men.net and Women.net. Many of those efforts didn’t make a ton of sense. However, given that generative AI impacts most of what Microsoft does (except the bathrooms), it makes more sense for the company to do this now than it did then.

Let’s explore how generative AI will impact security. Then we’ll close with my Product of the Week: the BAC Mono custom-built, street-legal track car.

The Biggest Security Exposure … Is You

We’re often overly excited about all the technology we have to mitigate breaches. But after layer over layer of security software to identify and correct breaches, the one constant is that the most common cause of a breach is a person. Ransomware attacks, identity theft, data theft, and any number of additional problems mostly track back to someone who was tricked into giving out information that was used to do harm.

The industry talks about regular employee training, security drills and audits, and extreme penalties, all of which have had minimal impact on the problem because companies don’t consistently and effectively practice any of them. I include securitycompanies, particularly their executives, in that group, who often seem to think the rules they helped create don’t apply to them.

Back when I was doing security audits (at a company known for security) on a CEO who often bragged he knew more about security than anyone else in my division, I was able to access his most sensitive information that was in a locked safe in 10 minutes. Not by using some super-secret James Bond hacking technology but by looking in his secretary’s drawer where all the keys were stored, which was unlocked.

Human error is the most significant and prevalent cause of some of our most painful security problems, and it has been this way for decades.