Human Focused Attacks Require Human-Centric Security
It’s nothing new that today’s integrated cyber-attacks target people, not just technology. Security leaders globally understand this – with 74% of global CISOs citing human error as their organisation’s biggest cyber vulnerability for the next year.
On top this, GenAI has amplified social engineering opportunities for cybercriminals, while also opening new doors for data to leak through.
In this article we look at what global CISOs are seeing as today’s biggest threats and how Proofpoint can help organisations shore up defences.
Global CISO’s Concerns
When asked to assess the biggest cyber threats on the horizon in 2024, over one-third of CISOs cited ransomware (41%), malware (38%) and email fraud (36%) as top concerns. However, another, more recent development sits at the top of the list.
More than half (54%) of global CISOs believe GenAI poses the biggest security risk to their organisations. Given the headline-grabbing rise and increased functionality of ChatGPT over the past 12 months, this finding is by no means a surprise. The model and other GenAI tools are viewed by CISOs as the most likely (44%) to introduce risk to their organisations.
AI in Cyber: A double-Edged Sword
While cybercriminals are introducing the use of AI into their arsenal – so are security teams. In fact, 87% of global CISOs are looking to deploy AI-powered capabilities to help protect against human error and advanced human-centred cyber threats.
Organisations must consider an AI-powered solution that protects people by blocking modern email threats pre-delivery, post-delivery and at click-time. One that provides actionable visibility into your human attack surface, highlighting who is being attacked and how. A solution that allows organisations to optimise security resources, resulting in positive operational outcomes.
By integrating multiple controls across email, cloud, users and suppliers, it can customise protection around your people before, during and after an attack.
Data Doesn’t Lose Itself; Data Loss Originates with People
Careless, compromised, and malicious users are responsible for most data loss incidents. In fact, 85% of global organisations suffered a loss of sensitive data in the past 12 months, with 71% of CISOs agreeing that employees were responsible for these incidents due to risky actions such as misdirecting emails, clicking phishing links, installing unauthorised software, and emailing sensitive data to a personal account.
Once again AI is exacerbating these threats, opening the door to new challenges in the data security landscape. While AI offers immense potential, it also introduces significant data loss risks. Inputting confidential information or Personally Identifiable Information (PII) into these models is like handing attackers a loaded weapon and organisations are understandably worried.
In addition, with the rapid proliferation of digital communication channels and increasingly disparate data sources, organisations must consider how to effectively solve security and compliance challenges in a fast and high-efficacy way. Security teams need visibility into their whole entire digital communication stack – email, mobile, social media, collaboration tools, text and must proactively monitor key data sources for sensitive information.
Human-Centric Security
To stop multi-layered attacks targeting your users, you need a comprehensive human-centric cybersecurity platform. One that solves the four critical human-centric concerns—stopping threats, protecting information, guiding users and securing app and identity posture.
The Proofpoint human-centric security platform is the only complete set of integrated solutions that solves the complete set of needs in human-centric security. It protects your people from human-targeted threats, data loss risk, and human error – helping organisations stop all human-centric threats for today and tomorrow’s landscape.
