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Generative AI poses security threat for IT Leaders

The top concerns for IT and security leaders were analyzed in a recent report by Bitfinder.

According to the report, 96% of all respondents agreed that generative artificial intelligence (AI) a threat with more than a third (36%) stating its use for manipulating or the creation of deceptive content (deepfakes) is a significant threat. The report found that confidence in the ability to spot a deepfake type of attack (audio/video) was high with 74% believing colleagues in their department could do so.

More than half of all respondents (57%) surveyed experienced a data breach or data leak in the last 12 months, up 6% from the previous year when asked the same question. At 73.5%, U.K. respondents experienced the most data breaches or leaks followed by Germany at 61%. Singapore experienced the least at 33% (24% below the average).

The report found that 64.3% of all respondents stated they will be looking for a new job in the next 12 months, up a considerable 25% when compared to last year’s result. This finding correlates with 70.2% of respondents agreeing they must work weekends due to security concerns their company faces. Respondents in the U.K. were most likely to work weekends at 81% and German respondents are most likely to look for new jobs at 76.6% (12.2% higher than the average).

When asked what the top security concerns are when it comes to managing cloud environments, 38.7% stated IAM followed closely by maintaining cloud compliance at 38%. Singapore respondents were well above the average (50.5%) saying IAM was their biggest challenge. At 36%, shadow IT came in as a strong third overall followed by risk of misconfigurations at 34%. Additionally, when asked how risk is monitored across cloud infrastructure, only 44.6% of overall respondents say they conduct regular audits and assessments.

More than 74% agree phishing/social engineering have increased in sophistication — The top cybersecurity threats according to overall respondents are phishing/social engineering and software vulnerabilities and/or zero-days both at 32% followed closely by GenAI’s influence on cyber threats and ransomware (both at 29%) and insider threats at 28%. More than 74% of respondents say they have seen an increase in the sophistication of phishing attacks.

When asked what the biggest challenge is about an organization’s current security solutions, adhering to data compliance and regulations was the number one challenge for 28% of all respondents. Extending capabilities across multiple environments was a close second at 27.5% followed by incompatibility with other security solutions at 25%.

Read the report.

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Taelor Sutherland is the Associate Editor at Security magazine. Sutherland covers news affecting enterprise security leaders, from industry events to physical & cybersecurity threats and mitigation tactics. She is also responsible for coordinating and publishing web exclusives, multimedia content, social media posts, and a number of eMagazine departments. Sutherland graduated in 2022 with a BA in English Literature from Agnes Scott College.