“AI itself is neither inherently good nor unhealthy – however it has the potential to be each. Within the fingers of defenders, it will possibly provide highly effective safety from cyberattacks; within the fingers of cybercriminals, it may be used exploit human vulnerabilities on a large scale. All of it is determined by who’s behind the keyboard,” – Allan Juma, Cyber Safety Engineer at ESET East Africa.
Allan Juma, Cyber Safety Engineer at ESET East Africa
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, 2 April 2025 -/African Media Company(AMA)/ – Synthetic intelligence (AI) is remodeling cybersecurity – for higher and for worse. Cybercriminals are leveraging AI advances to coordinate extra refined assaults, whereas safety groups deploy improved defence mechanisms, utilizing the identical expertise. For companies throughout Africa, who’ve prioritised digitisation over the previous decade, this creates new vulnerabilities that have to be addressed, not simply at a tech degree – however a human one.
“Superior social engineering is likely one of the high AI-enhanced cyber threats on our radar. Generative AI and enormous language fashions – ChatGPT, for instance – make it simpler for cybercriminals to craft convincing phishing emails that imitate executives or colleagues very well. These fashions are additionally expert with translation, permitting attackers to focus on new areas and smaller nations with area of interest dialects,” says Juma.
Utilizing AI, attackers can automate vulnerability scanning – rising the velocity and scale at which they exploit weaknesses in a enterprise’s safety. This contains figuring out compromised inner accounts, which they in flip use to ship phishing emails or deepfake impersonations (audio or video generated by AI to depict actual individuals, together with managers, CEOs, and finance officers). Because the expertise improves, it turns into more and more tough for workers to discern reliable communications from fraudulent ones.
“That is the place the human aspect is available in. A big proportion of information breaches are the results of human error. Cybersecurity consciousness coaching is crucial to combatting AI-driven cybercrime. A lack of information is the best menace to cybersecurity in any enterprise – and cybercriminals know that, they usually’re going to make the most of it,” says Juma.
Analysis carried out by the Google Risk Intelligence Group (GTIG) discovered that cybercriminals are utilizing Google’s AI mannequin Gemini for analysis and content material technology. In accordance with GTIG’s Adversarial Misuse of Generative AI report, launched in early 2025, this contains creating goal personas and messaging, in addition to translation, localization and discovering methods to extend their attain.
The place coaching and vigilance fail, AI pushed defence mechanisms will be the key to defending enterprise operations from cyberthreats. Safety groups can use AI to analyse patterns and predict cyber threats earlier than they occur – in addition to automate responses to detected threats, decreasing response instances and mitigating potential damages extra successfully.
“Really, AI has been a part of cybersecurity approaches and software program for a very long time – manner earlier than it grew to become a giant speaking level for most people. This provides us one thing of a bonus, as a result of we’ve been capable of spend extra time with it and combine it into our programs,” says Juma. “The hazard with AI turning into such a pervasive subject is that we’ve forgotten how harmful it may be. Companies have to maintain it high of thoughts and pay attention to the dangers – in order that they’ll handle them.”
Distributed by African Media Company (AMA) on behalf of ESET
About ESET
ESET gives cutting-edge digital safety to stop assaults earlier than they occur. By combining the facility of AI and human experience, ESET stays forward of recognized and rising cyberthreats – securing companies, crucial infrastructure, and people. Whether or not it’s endpoint, cloud or cell safety, their AI-native, cloud-first options and companies stay extremely efficient and straightforward to make use of. ESET expertise contains strong detection and response, ultra-secure encryption, and multifactor authentication. With 24/7 real-time protection and powerful native assist, we maintain customers protected and companies working with out interruption. For extra info, go to www.eset.com/afr.
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