A new age of technology, whether you use AI or not

We are living through a new age of cyber and technology, and I want to talk about what it means for the average person and the average business owner.

There is a lot of buzz about AI right now. Most people I talk to aren’t really using it yet. Here’s the thing, though. AI affects all of us, whether we use it or not.

There are two sides to it. On the good side, AI is a huge productivity tool. It can sort through massive amounts of data and find patterns a person would never have time to spot. Businesses and governments are putting it to work. The IRS, for example, has said it is using AI to help pick which of the largest and most complex partnership tax returns to audit.

The other side is that the same power is being used against us. Deepfakes, the fake videos and voices made with AI, have gotten so good they are practically impossible to tell from the real thing. Fake phishing websites, the copycat login pages that trick you into handing over your password, used to take a lot of time and money to build. Now they can be spun up in minutes.

Anyone with a laptop can now launch an attack

Not long ago, a serious cyberattack took an elite team and a big budget. That’s no longer true. Today, anyone with a laptop and an AI model that has had its safety limits removed can go after targets that used to be out of reach.

AI is also excellent at finding security bugs, especially in older software that hasn’t been updated. Bugs that sat unnoticed for years can now be found much faster. The bad guys know it, and they are using it.

That means the security baseline has gone up. The basics that were good enough a few years ago aren’t enough anymore. At DarkHorse IT, we now recommend more security subscriptions and services than we ever have, because it takes more layers to stay protected.

It also means your security software has to use AI to catch AI-driven threats. When attackers are using AI, defenders have to use it too. That’s the only way to level the playing field. And things are changing fast.

An epidemic of attacks, and what to do about it

Right now we are seeing an epidemic of attacks. Hospitals have been knocked offline. Schools have been held for ransom. Banks and other financial institutions have been hit. And just last week, PHP, the behind-the-scenes engine that runs WordPress and a huge share of the world’s websites, needed an emergency fix for serious flaws. The researchers who found those flaws used AI to do it, and the bugs had been hiding in PHP for more than a decade.

Attacks keep coming, and AI is making attackers faster. I wish I could tell you it’s getting better, but right now it isn’t.

So now is the time to take security seriously. Don’t sit this one out.

If you already work with an IT or cybersecurity company, ask them three questions:

  • What has changed in the threats we face?
  • What are you doing to keep up?
  • What layers of protection have you put in place for us?

If they can’t answer clearly, that tells you something. And if your business doesn’t have an IT or cybersecurity partner, now is the time to find one.

At DarkHorse IT, our mission is helping businesses defend against modern threats with layered security. No single tool stops everything, so we stack protections so that if one layer misses something, the next one catches it.

To see where your business stands, go through our free “Do you have every layer?” checklist at https://threats.darkhorseit.com. Tick off what you know is in place, and take anything you can’t tick to your IT provider.

Jeff Carney, DarkHorse IT, Moorhead