Nearly a quarter of cybersecurity bosses said their companies have experienced an attack powered by artific
ial intelligence in the past year, according to a new survey in which AI risk emerged as the defining challenge.
The number of AI-enabled attacks is likely underestimated because they are often hard to differentiate from
human-led efforts, according to a report from the Tel Aviv-based venture fund Team8, which focuses on cybersecurity,
AI, data, fintech and digital health. For the survey, the firm queried about 110 chief information security officers, who expressed both fear of malicious uses of AI and
hope that it could improve cyber defenses.
“We’ve already seen the impact of AI-driven attacks — especially sophisticated phishing and deepfake campai
gns that are incredibly convincing and hard to catch,” said Mandy Andress, the CISO at Elastic, an information technology and data analysis firm, in a statement provided w
ith Team8’s survey. “It’s clear we’re in the early stages of an AI arms race, and right now, the attackers moved first and have the edge.”
The most visible examples of AI-enabled attacks include deepfakes, voice cloning and real-time impersonation tac
tics to exploit human trust, the report said. But AI can also be used to augm
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ent and accelerate attacks and may soon evolve into autonomous weapons capable of acting without human intervention, Team8 said.
“They can exploit vulnerabilities at scale in an automated manne
r,” said Noa Hen, Team8 strategy director. “They can use AI to write malware much faster.”
Nearly 40% of the CISOs cited securing so-called AI agents that field
tasks for users as an unsolved cybersecurity challenge, with the report noting that they can be tricked by attackers or take the wrong actions. Nearly as many CISOs sa
id they worried about securing AI usage among employees. “That’s because very few organizations are g
ay face a lose-lose trade-off: either restrict access and stifle innovation or allow usage without controls and accept unmanaged risk.”
In terms of using AI to beef up cyber defenses, 77% of the CISOs expected that the first instances where autonomous AI agents would replace human labor would be less-experienced analysts in security operations centers, according to the survey. Such centers detect and respond to security incidents at organizations