The exponential progress being made in AI and GenAI represents an inflection point for technology and mankind, which is both exciting and cause for concern.
This is according to Garith Peck, managing executive: cloud and cyber security at BCX, who was addressing the ITWeb Security Summit in Sandton this week.
“The future is now and AI is changing our world, presenting opportunities for every industry,” he said. “But it is a double-edged sword, and is being used by both attackers and defenders. With every day that the technology evolves, the attack surface expands exponentially.”
The new environment demands that organisations architect resilient, predictive and adaptive defences across hybrid, multicloud and edge environments, and a greater focus on security thinking – balancing innovation with governance, automation with human judgment and opportunity with responsibility, he said.
Co-presenter Marc Nel, business development manager: security operations – Africa at Fortinet, said: “More and more, we are seeing a rise in the weaponisation of AI. Gartner noted a 40% rise in AI-enabled attacks over the past year alone.”
“On the other hand, as businesses harness AI for transformation, there are also AI model vulnerabilities to defend against. AI data lakes and AI models are vulnerable to risks like data poisoning and SQL injection attacks. Now, organisations are investing more in AI for security and security for AI,” he said.
“To combat these increasingly advanced threats, we recently announced FortiAI solutions: FortiAI-Protect threat detection, FortiAI-Assist agentic AI and AIOps, and FortiAI-SecureAI data protection,” Nel said.
Peck added: “BCX and our partners – like Fortinet – believe we need to approach AI responsibly. We need to start by addressing real problems with AI, not just implementing it because it’s shiny tech. We need to focus on real solutions, where AI solves for outcomes. Explainability is also key, and AI must be tightly coupled to security and risk management, specifically in the financial, healthcare and public sectors. We also have to focus on training – training people alongside AI – because we can’t have an AI model without human oversight.”
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