According to a new report, 73 percent of IT decision-makers globally are concerned about nation-state actors using AI to develop more sophisticated and targeted cyberattacks.
The study from Armis warns that AI-powered cyberwarfare attacks are now becoming a supercharged cyber weapon and urges organizations to immediately close the divide between current cybersecurity programs and future proactive preparation as threats will increase.
“AI is enabling nation-state actors to stealthily evolve their tactics to commit acts of cyberwarfare at any given moment,” says Nadir Izrael, CTO and co-founder of Armis. “At the same time, threats are emerging at overwhelming rates from smaller nations and non-state actors leveraging AI to elevate to near-peer cyber threats. It is imperative that cybersecurity leaders shift their programs left of boom, enabling them to stop cyberattacks capable of crippling their operations before there’s any impact to their organization.”
The report shows 81 percent of IT leaders say moving to a proactive cybersecurity posture is a top goal for their organization in the year ahead but 58 percent of organizations admit that they currently only respond to threats as they occur, or after the damage has already been done.
Among other findings 85 percent IT decision-makers confirm that offensive techniques regularly bypass their security tools. Only 53 percent believe that their government can defend its citizens and organizations against an act of cyberwarfare, while just 33 percent strongly agree that their own organization is prepared to handle a cyberwarfare attack and respond to related threats.
Around the globe, IT decision-makers consistently point to three dominant state-sponsored threat actors: Russia (73 percent), China (73 percent) and North Korea (40 percent). 72 percent believe that the cyber capabilities of nation-state actors have the potential to trigger a full-scale cyberwar, with devastating consequences for global critical infrastructure. 75 percent of IT decision-makers believe cyberwarfare attacks will increasingly target institutions representing free press and independent thought — a sharp rise from last year’s 42 percent.
You can get the full report from the Armis site.
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