What are the Risks and Rewards of ChatGPT in Cybersecurity?

Open AI's ChatGPT is possessed with risks and rewards in the cybersecurity field

You're aware of the hype and anxiety surrounding ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot created by OpenAI unless you've been on retreat in a wilderness area without an internet connection for the past several months. You may have read articles about academics and teachers being concerned that it will make cheating easier than ever. On the other side, you might have read articles extolling all of Open AI's ChatGPT potential applications.

Alternatively, some of the more esoteric examples of people using the tool may have peaked your interest. For instance, one user created a King James Bible-style handbook for removing peanut butter sandwiches from a VCR using the tool. Another requested that it write a song in the style of Nick Cave; the singer was unimpressed with the results.

But, amid all the hype and debate, there hasn't been nearly enough focus on the risks and rewards that AI tools like ChatGPT present in the cybersecurity arena. In this article, we will understand the risks and rewards of ChatGPT in cybersecurity.

Understanding ChatGPT

It's crucial to gain a better grasp of what ChatGPT is and what it can do to obtain a better concept of what those risks and rewards entail.

The US-based startup OpenAI developed a larger family of AI tools, including ChatGPT, which debuted on March 14, 2023, and is currently in its fourth edition. Although it is formally referred to as a chatbot, that doesn't exactly capture its adaptability. When trained using both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques, it is capable of significantly more than the bulk of chatbots. Based on the entire set of data it was trained on, it might generate content for its responses. Together with general knowledge, this material also covers programming languages and code. So, it is capable of playing games like tic-tac-toe, imitating an ATM, and even simulating an entire chat room.

Most importantly, it can contribute to enhancing enterprises' customer service through more precise, individualized messages for companies and other huge organizations. It can even create and debug software. It could pose a hazard to cybersecurity due to some of those aspects as well as others.

The Bad Guys are Using it Too

Cybercriminals are also investigating ways to use ChatGPT to their advantage, despite the efforts of cybersecurity experts. For instance, they might leverage their capacity to produce harmful programs. Alternatively, they might employ it to create content that appears to have been created by a person, which might be used to fool users into clicking on harmful links, which could have dangerous repercussions.

Some people are even utilizing ChatGPT to effectively impersonate real AI assistants on business websites, creating a new battleground in the war against social engineering. Recall that the ability to target as many potential vulnerabilities as frequently and fast as possible is crucial to the success of hackers.

Use the Available Tools

It should be obvious by now that your security team should be utilizing ChatGPT and other AI tools to support your cybersecurity efforts if fraudsters are using them to strengthen their assaults. But you don't have it deal with it alone.

The best security provider will constantly investigate how cybercriminals are enhancing their attacks with the newest technology, as well as how those technologies may be leveraged to increase threat detection, prevention, and defense. Additionally, given the harm that a cybersecurity attack can cause to your vital infrastructure, they ought to be alerting you to this as well.

Education, Filtering, and Bolstering Defenses

ChatGPT has a lot to recommend, on the plus side. The most significant and simple task it might do is phishing detection. Companies should teach employees to regularly use ChatGPT to determine whether any content they are dubious of is phishing or was created with harmful intent. This is significant because social engineering attacks like phishing continue to rank among the most potent forms of cybercrime, despite recent technological breakthroughs.