Deep Fakes Become Leading AI-Enabled Attack Vector

Cybercriminals are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to launch deep fake attacks, which have become the leading AI-enabled attack vector, accounting for nearly half of all AI-related breaches. According to a recent IBM study, deep fakes made up 47% of AI-enabled breaches, while AI-enabled malware accounted for 18%. The study found that organizations are also facing significant financial losses due to these attacks, with the average cost of an AI-related breach being $6 million, compared to the global average breach cost of $4.99 million.

The report highlights the growing concern among cybersecurity professionals about the rise of AI-enabled threats and the need for increased investment in AI-driven security solutions. The study notes that organizations are spending more on alert triage, penetration testing, and vulnerability management to combat these threats. However, despite this increased investment, many organizations are struggling to contain AI-related breaches, with a mean time to identify (MTTI) and contain (MTTC) of 247 days.

The IBM study also found that the most common causes of AI-related breaches were weaknesses in compromised application programming interfaces (APIs), applications, or plug-ins, as well as cloud misconfigurations affecting AI workloads. The report emphasizes the importance of implementing proper AI access controls to prevent these types of attacks.