What I have seen forward-looking organizations do is elevate OT security to the board level so that OT risk is added to the Risk Register as board oversight. Organizations that I work with, where life and health concerns are top of mind, have segmented their network to reduce the blast radius of an attack. The best defense is to implement a ransomware resilient backup solution that has immutable backups with a 3-2-1-1 strategy, where that extra 1 is an immutable copy. Once the board has been made aware of the risk, the budget typically follows.
AI is accelerating both the attackers and your defenses, but governance is often missing
What I see generative AI doing in cybersecurity is accelerating what attackers can do and lowering the cost of entry for new criminal gangs. Cyberattacks are more potent because the technology makes it easier to target victims, create deepfake videos or explicit and lewd pictures or fake their voices. Cyber defense tools are getting better, but make no mistake, we are in an arms race with the attackers, criminals and nation-states.
At the same time, organizations are expanding their attack surface by leaps and bounds through internal AI adoption. Chatbots, AI assistants, GPT models and internal AI tools are all new vectors for attack. Agentic AI tools are very easy to build, but are often given more access and privileges than needed. Agents that can read and compose emails, and create and delete appointments and contacts, can provide significant benefits while also creating havoc if there isn’t a human in the loop or proper governance in place. Many organizations are deploying AI faster than they can secure it.
