Artificial intelligence will also take the stage in cyberattacks

Following the cyberattacks on ICBC, China's largest bank, and ChatGPT, the dangers posed by this situation have once again moved to the top of the agenda. The economic cost of these attacks continues to rise with each passing day.

According to the Global Risks Report published by the World Economic Forum, cybersecurity is currently and will continue to be one of the top 10 most significant risks.

According to information from Cybersecurity Ventures, the annual cost of cybercrime to the global economy is expected to reach 10.5 trillion dollars by 2025.

SOME CYBERATTACKS WILL BE CARRIED OUT BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Cybersecurity Expert Baran Erdoğan stated that cyberattacks should be viewed as the most common and easiest criminal activities of the new era.

Stating that digitalization, the internet reaching every aspect of human life, and increasingly complex technological infrastructures have ushered in a new era in human life, Erdoğan continued as follows:

"At this point, where research into digitizing the human soul and uploading it to the internet is being discussed and we are rapidly approaching singularity, we can foresee that with the inclusion of artificial intelligence technologies in this digital environment, there will be attacks where human intelligence and artificial intelligence find common ground and act together. The reason for the success of these attacks is the high probability of the formation of attack surfaces that are planned incompletely or incorrectly by humans, and the ease of detecting them. For the coming period, we can predict the following: companies will continue to be increasingly affected by cyberattacks, and some of these attacks will be carried out by artificial intelligence. While the purpose of the attacks sometimes manifests as short-term goals, money, or damaging an institution, it can also be foreseen as stealing data or focusing on larger targets by collecting information over a long period."

Providing information on the economic consequences of cyberattacks, Erdoğan said, "What is common to all of them is that the damages are in the order of billions of dollars. Beyond the economic damages caused to institutions and the losses resulting from regulatory fines, secondary damages—especially as a result of data leaks—can be seen in the form of individual fraud or violations of privacy for people."

Emphasizing that institutions must take a holistic approach to the issue, Erdoğan stated that this approach must cover all cybersecurity attack surfaces.

Erdoğan said that every security measure left open, ignored, or postponed carries the potential for all associated risks to materialize and cause massive damage to institutions.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS MUST BE DEVELOPED WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Stating that cyberattacks are one of the greatest threats, especially for companies with high levels of digitalization, Erdoğan concluded his words as follows:

"These firms will be exposed to ever-increasing attacks, and the damage they suffer will grow depending on the scale of the attacker's motivation. It will become very difficult to prevent attacks carried out with artificial intelligence, and it will be necessary for artificial intelligence defense systems to develop against artificial intelligence attackers that can improve and adapt themselves."