AI has the power to transform security operations, enabling organizations to thwart cyberattacks at machine speed and drive innovation and efficiency in threat detection, hunting, and incident response. It also has a significant impact on the ongoing global cybersecurity shortage. Approximately 4 million cybersecurity professionals are needed worldwide. AI can help overcome this gap by automating repetitive tasks and streamlining workflows to close talent gaps and improve the productivity of existing defenders.
However, AI is also a threat vector in its own right. Adversaries are looking to leverage his AI as part of their exploits, seeking new ways to increase productivity and leverage accessible platforms that suit their objectives and attack techniques. Therefore, it is important for organizations to ensure that AI is designed, deployed, and used securely.
Learn how to drive safe AI best practices in your environment while maximizing the productivity and workflow benefits the technology offers.
4 tips for safely integrating AI solutions into your environment
Traditional tools can no longer keep up with today's threat landscape. The speed, scale, and sophistication of modern cyberattacks requires new approaches to security.
Regardless of the analyst's experience level, AI can improve security analysts' speed and accuracy across daily tasks such as identifying scripts used by attackers, writing incident reports, and identifying appropriate remediation steps. , which helps scale the defenders. In a recent study, 44% of AI users showed increased accuracy and 26% faster speed across all tasks.
However, to take advantage of the benefits brought by AI, organizations must ensure that they are deploying and using the technology safely so as not to create additional risk vectors. When integrating new AI-powered solutions into your environment, we recommend the following:
- Apply vendor AI controls and continuously evaluate their suitability. For AI tools deployed in the enterprise, it is essential to evaluate the vendor's built-in capabilities to facilitate a secure and compliant AI deployment. Cyber risk stakeholders across the organization must come together to proactively align on defined AI workforce use cases and access controls. Additionally, the risk leader and her CISO should meet regularly to determine whether existing use cases and policies are appropriate or need to be updated as goals and learnings evolve.
- Protects against prompt injection. Security teams must also implement strict input validation and sanitization of user-supplied prompts. We recommend using context-aware filtering and output encoding to prevent prompt manipulation. Additionally, large-scale language models (LLMs) need to be updated and fine-tuned to improve the AI's understanding of malicious inputs and edge cases. Monitoring and logging LLM interactions can also help security teams detect and analyze potential prompt injection attempts.
- Mandating transparency across the AI supply chain: Before implementing a new AI tool, evaluate all areas where AI may come into contact with your organization's data through third-party partners and suppliers. Leverage partner relationships and cross-functional cyber risk teams to explore what you learn and fill any gaps that arise. It's also important to maintain a current zero trust and data governance program, as these basic security best practices can help harden your organization against AI-powered attacks.
- Focus on communication: Finally, cyber risk leaders must recognize that employees are seeing the impact and benefits of AI in their personal lives. As a result, it makes sense to consider applying similar technologies across hybrid work environments. CISOs and other risk leaders should proactively enforce their organization's policies regarding AI use and risk, including which designated AI tools are approved for the enterprise and who employees should contact for access and information. We can stay ahead of this trend by sharing and strengthening. This open communication informs and empowers employees while reducing the risk of uncontrolled AI coming into contact with a company's IT assets.
Ultimately, AI is a valuable tool to strengthen your security posture and improve your ability to respond to dynamic threats. However, certain guardrails are required to realize maximum benefits.
Download the report to learn more. “Addressing Cyber Threats and Strengthening Defenses in the Age of AI” Get the latest threat intelligence insights Microsoft Security Insider.
