{"id":68428,"date":"2025-02-20T11:05:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T03:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=68428"},"modified":"2025-02-20T11:05:03","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T03:05:03","slug":"89-percent-of-tech-leaders-worry-genai-flaws-could-negatively-impact-cybersecurity-strategies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2025\/02\/20\/89-percent-of-tech-leaders-worry-genai-flaws-could-negatively-impact-cybersecurity-strategies\/","title":{"rendered":"89% of IT leaders worry GenAI flaws could negatively impact cybersecurity strategies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sophos.com\/\">Sophos<\/a>, a global player of innovative security solutions for defeating cyberattacks, released a new report, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/news.sophos.com\/beyond-the-hype-the-business-reality-of-ai-for-cybersecurity\">Beyond the Hype: The Businesses Reality of AI for Cybersecurity<\/a>,\u201d which surveyed 400 IT leaders on their use of AI in security. The survey found that, despite 65% having adopted generative artificial intelligence (GenAI capabilities), 89% of IT leaders are concerned that flaws in GenAI cybersecurity tools could put their organization at risk.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Additionally, according to new Sophos X-Ops research, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/news.sophos.com\/en-us\/2025\/01\/28\/update-cybercriminals-still-not-fully-on-board-the-ai-train-yet\">Cybercriminals Still Not Fully on Board the AI Train (Yet)<\/a>,\u201d there has been a <a href=\"https:\/\/news.sophos.com\/en-us\/2023\/11\/28\/cybercriminals-cant-agree-on-gpts\/\">slight but noteworthy shift<\/a> in the way cybercriminals use AI. After investigating several underground forums, Sophos X-Ops found that, while there\u2019s still skepticism about GenAI, some criminals are using it to automate mundane tasks, such as crafting bulk emails and analyzing data. Others are incorporating it into spam and social engineering toolkits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAs with many other things in life, the mantra should be \u2018trust but verify\u2019 regarding generative AI tools. We have not actually taught the machines to think; we have simply provided them the context to speed up the processing of large quantities of data,\u201d said Chester Wisniewski, director, global field CTO, Sophos. \u201cThe potential of these tools to accelerate security workloads is amazing, but it still requires the context and comprehension of their human overseers for this benefit to be realized.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With some form of AI embedded in the cybersecurity infrastructure of 98% of organizations surveyed, IT leaders expressed concern about potential over-reliance on AI, with 87% of respondents stating they were concerned about a resulting lack of cybersecurity accountability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>GenAI and Reducing Burnout<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Different-sized organizations expressed different priorities for utilizing GenAI. While large organizations (those with more than 1,000 employees) are prioritizing improved protection, respondents with 50-99 employees rated reducing burnout as their top desired benefit from GenAI tools. However, complicating matters, across all sizes of organizations, 84% of leaders surveyed said they were concerned about pressure to reduce cybersecurity professional headcount due to unrealistic expectations about AI\u2019s abilities to replace human operators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Other Key Findings from the \u201cBeyond the Hype\u201d Report:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Costs of GenAI Are Hard to Quantify: <\/strong>75% of IT leaders agree that the costs of GenAI in cybersecurity products are hard to quantify.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Companies Are Counting on Savings from GenAI<\/strong>: While 80% of IT leaders believe that GenAI will significantly increase the cost of cybersecurity tools, most organizations believe GenAI offers a path to lowering overall cybersecurity expenditure with 87% of respondents believing the savings of GenAI will offset the costs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite 65% having adopted generative artificial intelligence (GenAI capabilities), 89% of IT leaders are concerned that flaws in GenAI cybersecurity tools could put their organization at risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":68429,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[6498,6151,286,54,2103,206,96,2727,1656],"class_list":["post-68428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-good-tech","tag-high-tech","tag-it-security","tag-security","tag-security-breach","tag-sophos","tag-technology","tag-technology-adaption","tag-technology-investment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68430,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68428\/revisions\/68430"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}