It’s scary to think that even the most secure AIs can easily malfunction when they are susceptible to unfiltered and untrustworthy data!
You don’t have to believe my words, but a shocking report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) just revealed them. So, cybercriminals, who are just waiting for AIs to take charge, can easily manipulate data and poison it.
Some industry experts are saying this is just the start. However, knowing about the AI security risks and the countermeasures might help you immensely.
So, let’s understand what exactly are the AI risks!
Key Takeaways
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No AI is impenetrable from malicious and untrustworthy data
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The rapid adoption of AI is making AI attacks more frequent
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Regular AI optimization & audits can prevent some of the AI cybersecurity risks
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AI uprise will be inevitable but restricting it to a certain degree is possible
What are AI Security Risks?
AI security risks are the ongoing and potential misuse of AI technology to manipulate or poison crucial data.
On one hand, AI can do tasks in seconds that humans take ages to complete. On the other hand, AI can fall victim to severe cyber-attacks that will crush your whole system in seconds.
Now you might be thinking, what are the AI security risks? Let’s learn a little bit about them one after the other.
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Automated Malware: AI is the perfect tool to create automated malware that can use guardrail loopholes to be more destructive. Not only that, automated malware can act independently without any human intervention.
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Frequent Cyber Attacks: As GenAI grows stronger, so does the possibility of more cyber attacks. Cybercriminals can use the AI, ML &
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Impersonation: You might have already seen AI influencers and deep-fake videos. So, it’s easy to guess that AI can easily impersonate humans in the near future. How will you be able to detect those accurately?
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Privacy Stealing: When the AI is fed malicious data, it can easily take that into the modeling system and misuse it. The chances of losing your data because of AI have never been lower!
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Fake Virus Threats: In the world where everything is changing rapidly, cyber threats are becoming more and more diverse and one of them is fake virus warning. These fake alerts are designed to mislead users into thinking that their systems are infected thus making them download malicious software or visit the wrong sites. Well-equipped predators of scam use these fake virus threats to elicit an emotional response from the target users and make them take measures that are damaging to their security.
Top 4 AI Security Risks That You Should Be Aware Of!
Even if you understand how AI works, it’s never enough to be free from its terrors. In the current stage, you might not feel the freight but soon enough, there might be a splurge in AI cybersecurity risks.
So, you should always stay ahead in understanding the risks of Artificial intelligence. Otherwise, the next target of some cybercriminal can be you!
Let’s check out what are the top 4 security risks of AI that you should be aware of this very second-
Data Poisoning
All great things come with immense power to build and destroy. The same thing applies to AI. Using AI can make you do wonders but also make you fall into the traps of cyber scams.
If AI is exposed to malicious content, it can easily create bias in the final results. This affects our key industries such as healthcare, finance, and transportation.
AI Hallucination
It seems odd to think that a bunch of coding lines can hallucinate, right? Well, If you haven’t faced this already, sometimes AI can’t even solve basic math problems. Or, your answer to a very simple tech question.
The flaw of presenting false or inaccurate information is termed AI hallucination.
If you rely on AI too deeply, it can also make you vulnerable to wrong results and outcomes.
Malicious Bots
There are already numerous examples of malicious bots and their attacks. Even the most capable ChatGPT is not free from its risks. While AI can fight harmful bots, it can also create the most powerful ones to expand artificial intelligence security issues.
Bias and Discrimination
Any AI model is only as capable as humans make it to be. So, if not treated with good training data, the AI can get biased and will be subjected to biased outputs.
This is extremely prevalent in facial recognition systems where AI can detect only a certain demographic.
How Can AI Tools Disrupt Your Organization’s Security?
Now, you are thinking about how AI can become a cybersecurity and privacy issue for your organization. Suppose, for a new product, you decide to hire a third party to build an AI model.
Here, there can be 3 major issues that will risk your entire establishment’s security-
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Algorithmic Bias: The AI can be trained with biased data, showing you the false results that you were looking for. It can be harmful not only to your organization’s growth but also negatively impact your customers.
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Lack of Transparency: In most cases, AI lacks transparency which makes it non-interpretable. So, you can’t really identify the exact issues with your model and if it is corrupted or not.
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Insider Threats: What if your own employee just injects some malicious bots into the AI model?
Who are the Main Culprits in Exploiting AI Security Risks?
ENISA has categorized a total of 7 types of agents that can exploit AI security risk issues. However, the main 3 are-
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Cybercriminals: It’s obvious that cybercriminals are always on the lookout for the next target. AI has given them the perfect opportunity to spread their wings. They will exploit your AI backend and then take ransom as much as they can.
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Competitors: Your competitors can benefit hugely from a disruption in your AI integration. So, they can always infiltrate using insiders in your organization.
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Hacktivists: Hackers who claim themselves as activists, can target your organization’s data with AI. Manipulating sensitive data that can reveal your strategies and tactics.
6 Ways You Can Protect Yourself from AI Takeover!
As mentioned earlier, even the best AI tools sometimes can’t guarantee the safety of your data and security. AI privacy risks may soon become a global issue once the adoption rate increases.
What you can do is take preventive measures that make your system less vulnerable. You can do the following things to stay safe.
AI Audits
Whether you own an organization or are an independent programmer, always audit any AI system you use. Perform periodic audits and look for vulnerabilities to reduce artificial intelligence security issues.
You can also take the guidance of cybersecurity experts and AI professionals to audit your system. Make sure to run every test including penetration testing, vulnerability assessments, and system reviews.
Restrictive Automation
Even if we have to be dependent on AI, we have to tread carefully. Restricting the language model or machine learning process can help developers to look for anomalies properly.
Moreover, it can help the organization to integrate AI into the system after assessing it thoroughly.
Software Optimization
Always keep your security software, operating systems, and frameworks up to date. Avoid any suspicious patches or activities. The need for next-gen antivirus software has never been higher.
Try to follow the best practices of software and hardware optimization to ensure full-fledged security.
AI Vulnerability Management
For organizations, AI vulnerability management can be a great way to stay out of AI cybersecurity risks. It can not only mitigate data breaches and leaks but also identify where the issue stems from.
Vulnerability management starts with identifying, analyzing, and triaging vulnerabilities and then reducing the attack surface of AI penetrations.
Adversarial Training
While it is not advised to expose any AI model to too much malicious data, some adversarial training can be a game-changer. It can analyze and improve the machine-learning process to increase the resilience of AI models.
On top of that, exposure to different scenarios, data, and learning techniques can help the AI model solidify its security measurements.
Staff Awareness
After you have taken every measure to strengthen your AI, it’s important to train your employees too. Your staff can easily fall victim to AI attacks which can lead to you. So, encourage and train your staff for AI risk management as soon as you can.
FAQs on What Are AI Security Risks, Answered
How can AI be used to improve security?
You can use AI to look for any vulnerabilities and security risks in your system to make it more secure. However, always be careful of depending too much on AI models.
What are the risks of generative AI?
The main risks of GenAI are IP misuse, false results, and amplifying societal biases and discrimination.
What's the future of AI security?
The future of AI security will observe an increasing adoption of automation, predictive model assessment, and so on. You will be able to find patterns and prioritize threats easily with AI security tools.
Is an AI Security App Safe?
At any point, AI security apps can pose a threat to your organization if data is manipulated or poisoned. So, no AI security app is 100% safe to use.
Conclusion
In the end, it’s reasonable to think that with the passing of time, AI security systems will increase exponentially. However, with such rapid adoption will come some new challenges.
For the future, we can only hope that AI will not take your freedom away and we can live in harmony with reduced AI security risks!
