ChatGPT: A New Face of Cybersecurity?

Breaches are happening every day. And they are even happening to the bigger organizations. Some in recent years include Microsoft, Facebook, Uber, PayPal, and, most recently, Toyota’s supplier portal.

Sure, each one is damaging to the brands and their customers, but they are not all the same. Ransomware, malware, insider threats and crypto jacking are a few types of attacks. The attacks differ, the mistakes companies made that allowed bad actors to access their systems differ and the fixes differ.

There is one new type of threat that is brewing with the introduction of ChatGPT and generative AI.

“ChatGPT is the first real AI that exists. It turned the industry on its head,” said Draython Savoi, chief operating officer and co-founder, CybrHawk. “It can impact multiple industries, and there will be a huge change in the next five years.”

Savoi was part of a panel discussion at the 2023 MSP Expo in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

ChatGPT, the AI assistant of the future, comes with a lot of buzz. It’s a hot topic as it intrigues people and comes with worries about it replacing certain jobs. Going back to the security side, a question was asked as to what will happen when the bad actors get ChatGPT in their hands.

The simple answer is that they can make themselves have a human voice.

“When threat actors get a hold of that technology, they will use all the techs to impersonate people we know and trust,” said Mikey Pruitt, MSP Evangelist, DNSFilter.

Kieran Frost, chief operating officer, Sendmarc, agreed with Pruitt and added that “I can use ChatGPT to improve my script and translate it into various languages.”

Tools used by the good guys are also tools that are used by the bad guys. It is no different with ChatGPT.  MSPs and vendors need to be prepared to guide their customers through security practices when it comes to tools like ChatGPT.