The Human Element in AI Cybersecurity Risk
It’s not hard to look around right now and see the collective excitement about AI, paired of course, with a healthy dose of fear and skepticism. But if we strip out the hype to think about AI as a tool, it helps to also think about it as a tool that’s available to anyone. So, while AI can be used as a tool for cybersecurity defense, it’s also being eagerly used as a tool for cybercriminals—which means that AI is absolutely increasing your cybersecurity risk.
While there are many different types of cybercrime, all of them growing increasingly more sophisticated by the day, they all essentially boil down to two different ways criminals can attack: systems attacks and attacks through people.
Verizon’s 2023 Data Breach report found that “74% of all breaches include the human element, with people being involved either via Error, Privilege Misuse, Use of stolen credentials or Social Engineering.” While our minds most often go to social engineering attacks like phishing when we think of these types of cybercrime, often criminals will target people to then gain access into a business’s systems without their knowledge—going after troves of data and other valuable information instead of a simple financial payout.
Thanks to AI, criminals can now evolve their tactics even faster, as it enables them to analyze and adjust in real-time, to continue evading detection. AI is also helping criminals get better at deceiving and manipulating employees, from deep fakes to more convincing phishing emails.
Which is why employee training is crucial to help keep your defenses strong. Just like effective employee communications is the secret to meeting IT compliance standards, a robust cybercrime employee training program can go a long way towards keeping your business safe. When employees develop a better understanding of what the latest threats are, how they can impact your business, what to look for, and how to handle responding and reporting an attempt, your business is far better protected.
Ahead, we’ll walk you through some critical elements of an employee cybercrime training program.
1. Help Your Employees Understand Why Cybersecurity is Important
Just like with compliance, or really any business rule or standard, you’ll see adherence increase when your employees move to understand why cybersecurity measures are important and how it impacts them.
This is part of leading your employees as a team, but it’s crucial to help them understand that the risk of a cybersecurity breach isn’t only on you as the business owner. For example, a client came to us after they experienced a breach that was so devastating, it took weeks for their systems to come back online, and some employees even had to cancel planned trips to deal with the fallout.
Especially for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), breaches can be majorly financially impactful: 95% of breaches are financially driven and in the US, the average cost of a data breach reached $9.44 million in 2022. The costs of a breach go beyond a ransom fee; they can also include lost revenue during extended downtime, lost revenue due to customer loss following a breach, legal fees, and audit fees, which can be up to 13.5% higher for companies following a data breach than those without one.
If you’re a SMB, those types of costs can be difficult to come back to, especially if you’re dealing with the loss of customer and vendor trust. For your employees, it’s important that they understand that this impacts their job, and the entire company has to act as a team, working together on cyberdefense in order to safeguard the business.
2. Cybersecurity Awareness and Training is Always Ongoing
While there are indeed helpful training courses on cybersecurity that can be an important pillar to your employee training program, what really moves the needle on cybersecurity awareness is injecting it into your communications and culture.
Cybercriminals never stop, and especially with AI, they’re rapidly evolving their tactics at all times. Which means you want to keep awareness and defense top of mind at all times.
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If you publish regular employee newsletters, company emails, or other content through internal channels, make cybersecurity a regular topic. This could include examples of new attacks, reminders about what to look out for, and updates on how you’re doing as a company defending against these attacks.
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Consider providing incentives, such as extra PTO, when employees report a scam or attempt. Make sure every employee knows not to interact with or reply to phishing attempts, but to forward them to IT.
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Publish those attempts internally as they happen, with breakdowns of the tactic, so the entire company knows what to look out for—and that they’re happening.