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How to resolve AdBlock issue? Karabin: Cyber security needs AI to ward off AI
By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>
ONE OF THE BIG PROBLEMS now is that cyber security is getting worse, and harder to manage.
John Karabin, cyber security strategist for McGrathNicol Canberra, and formerly in a similar leadership role for NTT Australia, said the bottom line was that businesses needed to invest more in cyber security.
How bad is it?
Mr Karabin said he would have thought, with all the publicity about cyber breaches, companies would be taking more precautions now against cyber attacks and breaches.
“Sadly, the statistics indicate that it is growing,” Mr Karabin told Talking Business. 
“I think if you look at the latest figures from the Australian Cyber Security Centre, they get a call once every seven minutes about a breach or some event.
“That started off, a year or two ago, at once every 12 minutes, so the number of issues is growing.”
Can AI make a positive difference?
Mr Karabin said the current version of generative artificial intelligence (AI) would be a game changer for the cyber security industry.
There is some good coming out of the sector already, with a lot of security vendors starting to include generative AI in their systems.
On the other hand, a lot of attackers are were increasingly using it to weaponize the technology, he said.
“Generative AI is now increasing the number of vulnerabilities around,” Mr Karabin said.
“Its ability to potentially write code and exploit those vulnerabilities is another tool in the kit bag of the adversary.
“And probably the big one we’re all worried about is fake news, the ability to write sophisticated emails to trick someone to click on a link or convince someone to pay a bill to the wrong account,” he said.
“It’s a revolution at the moment in the industry in that it has abilities that we are still uncovering. It’s opening the door up to less skilled hackers.”
Cyber must lead in AI to fight it
On the plus side, this is also ensuring that cyber security vendors must assemble teams skilled at using AI to deal with this problem
“From the defender side, it gives us a tool to start to deal with the very complicated digital world that we’re handling,” Mr Karabin said.
“If I look at my own team, I run a team in Australia of about 70 people and the skills sets in my team are exponentially increasing.
“So I can use AI to focus teams in certain areas, perhaps use it to train them as well. We’re running war gaming sessions to help our teams get prepared,” he said.
“We can now use some of that generative AI to really hone in on the perpetrator and the really tiny signals that they’re making.
“On the flip side, the hackers, the adversaries are also able to use it. They can now point (at) every single possible vulnerability.
“They can find new vulnerabilities we hadn’t previously thought of, so we have this real cat and mouse game at the moment.”
This means the skill sets of his teams are growing.
“We now have a lawyer in our business that is aware of the cyber security environment that we’re dealing with because we have legal implications,” Mr Karabin said.
“We have governance, risk and compliance people. We have automations specialists for how we can use the tools more effectively.”
Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness
https://shows.acast.com/talkingbusiness/episodes/talking-business-41-interview-with-john-karabin-from-ntt-aus
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