LATEST INTELLIGENCE

THE STATE OF EMAIL SECURITY IN AN AI-POWERED WORLD

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• 98 % of security stakeholders are at least somewhat concerned about the cybersecurity risks posed by ChatGPT , Google Bard , WormGPT , and similar tools .

• 80 % of security stakeholders have confirmed that their organizations have already received AIgenerated email attacks or strongly suspect that this is the case .

• 94 % of survey participants generally agree that AI will have a major impact on their organization ’ s security strategy within the next two years .

• 46 % of respondents lack confidence in traditional email security solutions to detect and block AIgenerated email attacks .

• 92 % of respondents agree that “ good ” AI is valuable and necessary for countering the risks posed by “ bad ” AI .

The rise of generative AI has been nothing short of meteoric . Tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard are becoming increasingly popular among people who wish to use them for legitimate purposes – inspired by the efficiency they create .

However , cybercriminals are also embracing this technology . Generative AI is likely behind the increases in both the volume and sophistication of email attacks that organizations have experienced in the past few months , and it ’ s still early days . Attackers are already using it to create more realistic phishing emails without spelling or grammar errors , send highly persuasive business email compromise attacks , and write polymorphic malware . Unfortunately , the threat will only grow more severe in the future – and security leaders are taking note .

To understand how leaders are thinking about this threat , particularly in the email space , we surveyed 300 cybersecurity stakeholders from organizations of all sizes across multiple industries . Participants held positions at varying levels of seniority , but nearly one-quarter ( 24 %) were CIOs , CISOs , or other senior

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