Artificial intelligence is making cyberattacks used as diversions harder to dismiss, Cloudflare Asia-Pacific field chief information security officer Volker Rath told The Korea Herald, adding to security teams’ workload.
In the interview published Oct. 19, Rath said activity intended to distract defenders can now pose a serious threat in its own right. He said the growing volume of incidents can wear down analysts who must decide which alerts need attention.
South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) said Oct. 14 that 16 financial companies had recently suffered data breaches involving an estimated 100,000 pieces of customer data. It said there had been no reported incidents involving breaches of account passwords or credit card numbers thus far. Investigators were still examining whether AI had been used in the breaches.
The FSC also released results from a 12-point cybersecurity checklist completed by 555 financial companies. Of those, 425 reported that their measures were adequate, while 130 identified areas needing improvement, mostly involving security patches or control systems. Such gaps appeared more often among electronic financial services and online peer-to-peer lenders, the commission said.
Rath’s account, reported by The Korea Herald, points to a growing burden for defenders: they may need to investigate more activity even when it appears designed to draw attention elsewhere. He urged companies to automate more threat detection and response so analysts can focus on decisions requiring human judgment. He also said banks’ lengthy processes for buying and implementing security products can leave defenses lagging behind changing threats.
Cloudflare made a related argument while announcing its Adaptive Intelligence security product Aug. 31. The company said AI and inexpensive online tools allow attackers to make repeated attempts at low cost. Defenders, it said, face the more demanding task of identifying attacks without blocking legitimate users.
Rath also recommended making better use of existing safeguards, including threat modeling and Zero Trust access controls, according to The Korea Herald. His recommendation comes alongside Cloudflare’s pitch for a product intended to help manage automated attacks.
The FSC said authorities plan broader cybersecurity inspections and faster reporting and sharing of threat information. It also plans to establish a regulatory basis for requiring companies to test vulnerabilities more regularly. The commission gave no timetable for those measures.
