Issue Thirty One
November 2023
Emerging technologies bring both vast promise and heightened perils. As generative AI captivates industries, inflated expectations pressure organizations to adopt hastily. Yet responsible innovation demands pragmatism. By appointing an empowered leader and advancing gradually from targeted pilots, CEOs can balance valid demands with judicious preparations. Embedding oversight early and demonstrating quick wins builds support for scaled adoption on an ethical foundation.
Meanwhile, AI-powered threats like precisely targeted phishing barrage organizations. Leveraging collective human vigilance is crucial when adversaries exploit the one vulnerability technology cannot safeguard against – human nature. Through awareness and training, people become active sensors. Their intuition reveals risks that evade systems. United in purpose, collective intelligence complements controls, enhancing prevention, detection, and rapid response.
Technical capabilities advance rapidly, but human knowledge accrues slowly. As the promises and perils of emerging technologies proliferate, we must uphold our highest duties over expediency. With pragmatic patience, vigilance, and principles guiding the way, leaders can meet this pivotal moment by harnessing innovations prudently. The path ahead requires amplifying both human potential and collective discernment. Our greatest strengths will determine whether we ride these rising tides of change toward progress or catastrophe. The future remains unwritten, awaiting the wisdom we bring to shape it.
ZEROING IN
Generative AI: How CEOs Can Meet Board Expectations
As generative AI captivates industries amid inflated expectations, CEOs understandably feel rising pressure from boards to rapidly adopt this emerging technology. However, reckless haste motivated by impatience rather than wisdom often leads organizations astray. As leaders, we must meet this pivotal moment with pragmatism, guiding our organizations prudently to balance valid demands and judicious preparations.
The guidance here is grounded in real-world insights from CEOs, board members and data leaders navigating these challenges daily. Synthesizing their perspectives makes several things clear:
Leadership matters immensely. Appointing an empowered leader to spearhead a cohesive generative AI strategy is vital for avoiding fragmented, siloed efforts.
Starting slowly is shrewd. Advancing gradually from targeted pilots focused on high-impact use cases enables building capabilities while gathering learnings to inform wider rollout.
Governance cannot be an afterthought. Proactive policies and controls to address risks around security, ethics and impacts are crucial foundations before scaling.
By taking a phased, use case-driven approach backed by strong governance, CEOs can satisfy stakeholders while avoiding inflated expectations and risks that come with blind haste. Further, this prudent course sets up organizations for long-term success by:
Allowing time to identify the most promising and appropriate applications of generative AI given the organization's unique industry and objectives. One size does not fit all.
Providing space for teams to learn, gain skills, and develop best practices while starting small. Generative AI remains an emerging technology, and lessons from initial projects inform future expansion.
Embedding transparency, oversight and accountability early before generative AI is entrenched across operations. Regular audits and risk assessments become easier.
Demonstrating quick wins and tangible benefits from early high-impact use cases, which build internal advocates who then help "sell" scaled adoption to skeptical stakeholders.
Enabling creating a culture of responsible innovation centered on ethical practices and sober assessments of impacts on people. Our principles must guide us.
The key is starting with projects that solve current pain points, not chasing cutting-edge capabilities for their own sake. With emerging technologies, early successes based on concrete needs make the difference between forced and organic adoption enterprise wide.
As responsible leaders, we must also be candid about very real concerns generative AI brings around issues like data quality, security risks, entrenching biases and job losses. Balanced perspectives are mandatory, and pilot initiatives should actively monitor for harm indicators.
With pragmatic patience and vigilance, we can cultivate this technology as a beneficial instrument while mitigating known dangers and unintended consequences. But we must tune out the deafening hype and make level-headed decisions.
Boards testing our leadership today ultimately will respect those able to uphold their highest duties over expediency. The promises ahead are profound, as are the perils. But by pumping the brakes, laying foundations thoughtfully, and stepping forward with care, we both meet this moment and live up to the standards it demands of us.
“Leaders who ignore ethical AI will make unethical AI.”
I know we collectively have the wisdom and stewardship to instead make generative AI a true force for empowering human potential.
SQ Insight: Kenneth Holley - Chairman
The Human Sensor Network: Leveraging Collective Vigilance for Cybersecurity
In an era of rapidly evolving cyber threats, organizations require security approaches as agile as the adversaries they face. Technical controls alone no longer suffice when hackers exploit the one vulnerability machines cannot safeguard against – human nature.
By empowering your greatest asset, your people, as a human sensor network, your organization gains an intelligent edge against threats. Employees, customers, and partners possess intuition no algorithm can match, as well as insights into daily operations that reveal risks. Equipped through awareness training, they become active sentinels who detect subtle anomalies, identify social engineering, and ensure rapid incident reporting.
This collective vigilance amplifies prevention, catching scams before they breach defenses. It strengthens detection, uncovering insider access misuse and supply chain oddities. And it enables minimizing damages by speeding up response times.
Of course, harnessing collective intelligence on this scale requires foresight. Avoiding alert fatigue, sustaining motivation, and upholding ethics demand robust frameworks. But those investments pay dividends in resiliency.
By connecting people to security’s purpose, not just rules, you empower them as partners, not bystanders. Each human sensor makes your ecosystem more observant, transparent, and nimble.
Ultimately, people are your organization’s immune system against cyber threats. Collective vigilance brings intuition to the forefront, complementing technical protections. This fusion propels readiness, adaptability, and continuous learning – giving your defenses the edge against today’s relentless adversaries.
The path forward is clear. The time to position collective vigilance is now.
SQ Insight: Adam Brewer - CEO
Phishing Bait: The AI-Fueled Social Engineering Tactics Plaguing SMEs
This article discusses how cybercriminals are using advanced AI technology to launch more effective phishing attacks, particularly targeting small and medium-sized businesses. It highlights the rising popularity of phishing tools and their success in tricking individuals into revealing sensitive information. AI's role in phishing is a cause for concern, as it enables the creation of convincing fake content.
The combined effect of automated phishing tools and the power of AI to process large amounts of data very quickly has severe implications for the ability of threat actors to tailor phishing campaigns specifically to the target. Through the use of AI, threat actors can process large amounts of publicly available information or breach data to compile highly accurate insights into the inner workings of an organization.
With this information, in conjunction with popular phishing tools discussed in the article, a threat actor can customize a “spear phishing” email specifically designed to target one individual in an organization. The email is crafted to look as though it is coming from another user within the organization with a plausible scenario for their two roles. For example, Judy in payroll could receive an email claiming to be from Mark in sales requesting an update to their ACH details.
While this sort of attack is not new, previously it would have taken significant human effort to research and target an organization in this way. With the ever-growing prominence of AI tools that can process data, an attacker can now much more easily gather this information and perform similar attacks on a much greater scale. Through our research and mitigation efforts, we at Silent Quadrant are seeing a marked increase in the number of personally targeted phishing attempts.
The good news discussed in the article is that the power of AI is likewise being leveraged on the defense. In this way, as the attackers continue to refine their techniques, the defenses that strive to block them are also empowered with the ability to process huge amounts of data and find the trends and indicators necessary to stop these messages prior to reaching their destination. That being said, no tool is perfect, and no solution will eliminate all attacks, which means it comes down to the human component to thwart these attacks. In the end, a resilient culture and human relationships are the best defense against even the most technologically advanced attack. If Judy is in tune with her team and knows that Mark would have followed internal policies rather than sending this type of message, she will never fall prey to the attack.
SQ Insight: Chris Ellerson – Director, Client Experience
