Most Cybersecurity Staff Don’t Know How Fast They Could Stop a Cyber-Attack on AI Systems

Over half (56%) of IT and cybersecurity professionals have no idea how quickly they could shut down AI systems affected by a cyber-attack or security incident, new research by ISACA has found. Published on 23 March by the global certification body, the research is based on a survey of over 3400 security and digital professionals. Just under a third of respondents (32%) said that they believed they could halt potentially compromised AI systems within an hour, while 7% said they thought it would take over an hour. Confusion Over Enterprise AI Ownership Raises Security and Governance Risks Part of the issue stems from confusion over who is responsible for managing enterprise AI applications. A fifth (20%) of survey respondents said they didn’t know who was accountable for AI apps. Meanwhile, 28% of those surveyed said managing AI was the responsibility of board level executives, 18% said it was the responsibility of the CIO or CTO, while 13% said it is the responsibility to their CISO. No matter where responsibility lies, under half (43%) of security professionals surveyed said they have high confidence in their organization’s ability to investigate a serious AI incident and explain what happened to leadership or regulators. Just over a quarter (27%) said they had little to no confidence in their organization’s ability to do so. According to the ISACA research, many security professionals believe that their organization would struggle to identify a potential security issue related to AI, due to a lack of human oversight of systems. Only 36% of those surveyed said that humans must approve most AI actions before they happen within their organization. A further 26% said AI activity was only reviewed after the action has taken place. Meanwhile, 11% said AI actions are only reviewed in the event of specifically flagged activity and 20% said they did not know what role humans played in overseeing decisions made by AI at their organization. “While organizations may feel the push to adopt AI technology quickly to keep pace and leverage its capabilities, it is imperative they have the proper guardrails and governance in place before doing so,” said Jenai Marinkovic, vCISO and CTO of Tiro Security, co-founder and board chair of GRCIE, and ISACA Emerging Trends Working Group member. “Enterprises need to ensure the right people, policies, processes, and plans are in place to be able to not only use AI effectively and responsibility, but also to avoid potential major disruption if crisis hits,” she added.