Integrate ChatGPT and Generative AI into Cybersecurity Best Practices

ChatGPT has been making headlines since its launch in November 2022. Over the past five months, generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots have been the subject of many complex and ongoing discussions about their potential impact on the information security community and the cybersecurity landscape. whole.

For security leaders, the use of AI can be a powerful tool to help ensure that the architecture of their business can withstand all the evolving challenges of the threat landscape. Staying ahead of looming threats means that leaders are overlooking reactive, single-tier solutions that can no longer keep up with the new and increasingly sophisticated techniques of threat actors.

This blog post examines the use of ChatGPT in the context of cybersecurity and discusses its implications for information security. Learn how generative AI tools like ChatGPT are used. Can be safely implemented within the boundaries of cybersecurity best practices and used effectively to enhance your security strategy.

The Rise of ChatGPT | From Index-Based Search to Conversational Familiarity

For more than 20 years, Google Search has shaped the way modern Internet users discover, consume, and interact with the web’s vast wealth of information.

Google’s search engine provides information like a book index rather than a table of contents. Searching is largely manual, and it’s up to you to sift through all the hits, find the exact answer, correlate the information found, and finally handle how you think about it.

Alternatively, ChatGPT’s wildfire popularity is due to its ability to “speak” in a language that sounds natural. When asked a question, ChatGPT generates an answer from large amounts of text data such as books, articles, and web pages. After being trained to be conversational, it uses machine learning algorithms to reply in the same context as the rest of the conversation. As a result, responses are more human-like and give users a familiar feeling of two-way conversation, as opposed to the one-way, index-based search Internet users adopted in the days of Google. .

Multimodality of Social Media and ChatGPT in Information Retrieval

As the newest generation of internet users emerges, research shows that they prefer multimodal forms of communication and search for information on social apps like TikTok and Instagram. In these apps, information appears to come from “direct” sources and builds information exchanges based on conversation and casual interaction.

The technology behind ChatGPT isn’t new, but it seems to be riding the result of this new preference for community-centric conversations between “sources” and their consumers. Perhaps ChatGPT marks a tipping point in how users think and approach data organization. Within his first two months of launch, the number of AI bot users surpassed his 100 million, and as of 2023, he has over 13 million daily visitors.

Can ChatGPT be safely integrated into your cybersecurity strategy and processes?

Given the popularity of ChatGPT and its impact on information consumers around the world, security leaders are turning to tools like this as a way to enhance their businesses. It’s a powerful tool, but it’s important to evaluate how it fits into your organization’s workflow in a safe and effective way.

In most cases, end users report positive experiences with data output by AI chatbots. However, the bot’s parent company, OpenAI, has published various terms of service and safety policies, Point out to users the reality that ChatGPT does not currently provide fact-checking and the responses provided should not be blindly trusted.

According to NIST’s AI Risk Management Framework, AI systems are only considered trustworthy if they comply with multiple criteria. These include effectiveness, reliability, accountability, transparency, fairness with controlled harmful bias, safety and resilience, explainability, interpretability and safety.

Protecting ChatGPT from a human perspective

ChatGPT is safe to use when organizational leaders and security teams work together to manage risk. From a human perspective, it’s important to understand how generative AI chatbots can be abused and how to defend against them.

Reducing adversary entry barriers

Researchers have found that ChatGPT can be leveraged by attackers to generate malware commands or create on-the-fly malware. While this is completely against OpenAI’s content policy, there are indications that the attackers are actively working to circumvent chatbot companies’ restrictions by sharing their techniques on dark forums. If these restrictions were lifted, chatbots could be used by low-level cybercriminals and script kiddies to generate or improve existing malicious code.

AI phishing email

Given the conversation-based nature of chatbots, security experts hypothesize that ChatGPT could be used by attackers to craft well-crafted phishing emails. In the past, common telltale signs of phishing emails included grammatical errors, misspellings, and a strange or urgent tone. As threat actors start leveraging her ChatGPT to create socially engineered content, the generation of phishing emails may increase and become more persuasive.

As it stands, ChatGPT is being targeted like many other platforms available on the market. Organizations can address the potential risks that generative AI tools pose from a human-first approach.this means Engage employees in training and awareness programs about how bots such as ChatGPT work, how to detect AI-generated content, and identity-based cybersecurity measures.

Securing ChatGPT from a process perspective

More and more business leaders are recognizing that their employees need instruction on how to use ChatGPT safely and how to mitigate risks while using it. Many organizations have spent time creating his ChatGPT-specific policies and processes to protect data privacy.This may include Recommendations and requirements for code checking, brainstorming, content drafting, editing, and research.

These policies and processes may also include how companies implement quality control over content that ChatGPT participates in its lifecycle. In addition, relevant third-party generative AI tools are used to generate or process sensitive data and artifacts, to manage inherent bias, and to manage privacy, consumer protection, intellectual property, and vendor risks. can include contractual risk

Privacy risks associated with ChatGPT

The ability of AI systems to aggregate information makes it very likely that bots will use personally identifiable information (PII) to provide output to end users. The end-user is not restricted from entering PII information into her AI bot. AI bots are used to aggregate information for future purposes.

Confidentiality risks associated with ChatGPT

End users may interact with AI systems by inputting sensitive information about an organization and trying to gather better understanding or output. For example, an end user can enter an organization’s security policy and ask AI to phrase it in simpler terms. The output may be better with better structure than before, but the AI ​​can collect this information for future responses.

Data integrity risks associated with ChatGPT

Content generated by AI systems may provide output that differs from the original view or context, which can lead to inaccurate, incomplete, and biased output. Additionally, trusting the output as truth may lead to misinformation being used by the end user.

Legal and Regulatory Risks Associated with ChatGPT

Data fed to AI may contain copyright information, trade secrets, or confidential information, and responses output by AI do not have the consent of the data owner. End users should consider whether they have the right to use or publish such materials. There are also geographic laws and regulatory requirements that must be met when using data from AI bots.

Reputation risk associated with ChatGPT

If your staff is using ChatGPT to produce content, it’s important to note that tools are already available to recognize if that content was produced using AI. Tools for recognizing content generated by ChatGPT are not yet perfect, but utilities such as the OpenAI AI Text Classifier are improving rapidly and may see even more widespread adoption in the future.

Protecting ChatGPT from a technology perspective

What makes ChatGPT appealing is the speed and sleek look of the output when you pose a question or command. This can lead to an implicit trust in the underlying technology. As organizations move toward using this technology within their organization, they need to understand the dependencies in providing the expected output, including the following areas:

Data output homogenization

All output generated by ChatGPT can be similar in terms of structure and style, and lack of human emotion in content creation. The mass production and dissemination of ChatGPT’s output can lead to a limited perspective, discouraging users from exploring more angles and research, and discouraging creative writing and more innovative problem-solving. I have.

potential cost

While the costs associated with tools like ChatGPT may look attractive as developers seek adoption, that may not be the case in the future. When building a relationship, you should consider the possibility of unexpected increases in costs in the future. Most recently, the CEO of OpenAI announced The professional version of the tool offers higher limits and faster performance for subscribed users.

From a technical perspective, it’s important for organizations to be clear about what AI tools like ChatGPT can and can’t do. ChatGPT has the ability to analyze vast amounts of data and find patterns to generate responses, but it cannot reason, think critically, or understand what is best for your business. you can’t. But it can be a very powerful addition to human intelligence.of The human element in securely using ChatGPT continues to be important for organizations that are starting to make more use of AI in their daily operations..

Conclusion

The advantages of ChatGPT are numerous. There is no question that generative AI tools like ChatGPT have proven to augment human tasks and make workflows and content creation more efficient. As businesses seek to maximize ChatGPT’s benefits and secure a competitive advantage, it’s important to note that the use of generative AI is still in the early stages of mass adoption. .

When integrating ChatGPT into their enterprise cybersecurity strategies and processes, security leaders must consider a range of risks across people, processes and technology. With the right safeguards in place, generative AI tools can be used to support your existing security infrastructure.

SentinelOne continues to protect and support businesses around the world as they explore the benefits of innovative new technologies. Contact us or request a demo to learn how Singularity™ can help your organization autonomously prevent, detect and remediate threats in real time.