During the second half of 2024, phishing messages rose by over 200% and credential phishing attacks, where criminals target individuals for sensitive data such as login details, have increased even more.
Highly convincing phishing threats continue to cause significant concern, but as AI technology is increasingly being used to generate them it makes sense to turn its potential to confronting these and other cyber threats.
AI can provide engaging and effective training for employees, learn to predict and prevent scams and is already being used successfully to block email spam and stop phone scammers.
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Large Language Models Improve Cybersecurity Training
One of the main reasons why phishing scams are successful is because they use a psychological approach to exploit human vulnerabilities. Instead of depending solely on compromising computer software, attacks cleverly trick recipients into engaging with requests through emotional manipulation and authoritative claims.
While real people are often the best suited to spotting these fake messages, AI can still play an important role in training cybersecurity staff.
Instructions on how to spot fake emails might previously have focused on checking for obvious typos and grammatical mistakes, but when messages are generated by AI these errors are not such an issue.
Instead, large language models (LLMs) are able to generate persuasive phishing tests and examples of social engineering that can help to familiarize staff with the tricks and techniques used by scams.
Standardized training programs can feel impersonal but AI can be used to customize exercises to individual abilities and creative more interesting and interactive tasks.
Through analysing performance data and identifying the way in which an employee learns best, a chatbot can adapt guidance to address their weak spots, making end-user training more effective and efficient.
Learning Tools Process Data to Predict Future Attacks
As sophisticated phishing attacks are increasingly generated by AI, organizations are also turning to its technology in the form of learning tools in order to collect intelligence on potential threats.
As they use the same technology, these tools can be just as good at identifying suspicious emails as they are at generating them and so they are well suited to identifying AI-driven phishing attacks.
Through a combination of natural language processing and machine learning, AI can work quickly to analyze huge amounts of data on historical and real-time incidents and classify their authenticity.
By looking more closely at the different types of attacks, learning tools can be used to identify the organizations, regions, industry sectors and even individual employees that are being specifically targeted.
As well as predicting attacks, security tools can be trained to update blocklists or activate further authentication levels to prevent further high-risk attempts at access.
New Software Prevents the Creation of Phishing Websites
Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington revealed new software to enhance the detection capabilities of AI chatbots. Cybercriminals have found loopholes that can bypass these capabilities and have been exploiting them to create phishing websites instead.
In response, the new software has been trained to identify and react to specific patterns in instruction prompts used to create the sites. This enhances its potential to prevent the Chatbots from executing malicious prompts.
Innovative Models Help to Block Phishing Scams
Other major organizations have also taken steps to thwart the growing number of email and phone phishing attempts. By increasing the use of AI tools in its cyberdefense this year, Google has successfully blocked 20% more spam from its inboxes than in 2023.
Innovative AI models are used in conjunction with other security features in order to protect Gmail from phishing, spam and malware.
AI is able to process 1,000 times more reported spam by quickly recognizing patterns of potential fraud and can then respond more promptly to dubious messages.
To protect consumers from phishing calls, earlier this year Microsoft began offering a new service to telecommunications operators via Azure, its cloud computing platform.
The service is called Azure Operator Call Protection and uses AI to monitor phone calls and identify suspicious content that asks consumers for sensitive information such as bank details, pin numbers or passwords.
As well as performing real-time analysis of calls, AI will alert subscribers to the service as soon as there is a risk of them being scammed.
As the number of convincing phishing scams grows, organizations are having to find increasingly innovative ways of dealing with them.
AI technology is behind the surge in phishing emails, websites and calls and so it makes sense to use its technology to detect, predict and prevent further attempts.
Whether it is used to train employees to recognize sophisticated social engineering or teach software to identify and block malicious prompts, AI is a highly effective tool in combating the rise in phishing.