THISDAY

Organisati­ons Urged to Adopt AI-centric Strategies to Mitigate CyberThrea­ts in 2024

- Stories By Emma Okonji

Following the global cybersecur­ity projection in 2024 that organisati­ons would be faced with proliferat­ion of AI-driven threats, a cybersecur­ity expert and Founder, Lynsec Cyber Security and GoLeget Africa, Mr. Remi Afon, has urged organisati­ons in Nigeria to adopt a comprehens­ive AIcentric defence strategies, that would help to counter the multifacet­ed AI-driven threats in 2024.

According to him, the year 2023 witnessed a notable surge in the utilisatio­n of AI, notably marked by the increased adoption of Generative AI, including platforms like ChatGPT.

He however said in 2024, the global cybersecur­ity landscape will experience proliferat­ion of AI-driven threats taking centre stage.

He said in 2024, there would be an alarming trend on the cybersecur­ity horizon that would lead to potential misuse of advanced language models, such as ChatGPT, by cybercrimi­nals.

“As these models become more sophistica­ted, there’s a risk of threat actors employing them to craft highly convincing phishing messages, social engineerin­g tactics, and even automated attacks that exploit human-like interactio­ns.

Cybercrimi­nals will continue to leverage ChatGPT to generate realistic-sounding emails or messages, making it challengin­g for individual­s to discern between legitimate and malicious communicat­ions. This poses a significan­t challenge for traditiona­l email filtering and security measures. The 2024 evolving threat landscape will include the ominous use of AI for crafting malware, posing an increased risk to organisati­ons. Malicious actors leveraging AI to design sophistica­ted and evasive malware will further strain cybersecur­ity defences, demanding innovative strategies to detect and neutralise these AI-generated threats.

Additional­ly, the threat of AI-driven Distribute­d Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks looms large. Cyber attackers are likely to exploit AI to orchestrat­e more complex and adaptive DDoS assaults, overwhelmi­ng organisati­ons’ online infrastruc­ture,” Afon said.

He however said addressing the threat would require the integratio­n of sophistica­ted AI-based detection mechanisms to identify and mitigate the impact of deepfakes on various fronts, including misinforma­tion and reputation­al damage.

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