Majority of organizations believe phishing is the biggest AI risk

Recent findings from a report by Team8 have highlighted Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) concerns regarding artificial intelligence (AI). The report revealed that 70% of CISOs saw an increase in their budgets in 2024 compared to the previous year.

According to the survey, 75% of respondents expressed that phishing attacks represent the biggest AI-powered threat to their organizations, while 56% pointed to deepfake-enhanced fraud (voice or video) as a major concern.

The main challenges faced by organizations in defending AI systems are ‘Lack of expertise’ (58%) and ‘Balancing security with usability’ (56%). Forty-one percent of CISOs plan to explore purchasing solutions for managing the AI development lifecycle in the next 1-2 years. Furthermore, priorities for CISOs include solutions for third-party AI application data privacy (36%) and tools to detect and map Shadow AI usage (33%).

Data protection emerges as a top concern that existing solutions fail to adequately address. CISOs identified critical data security issues such as insider threats and next-gen DLP (65%), third-party risk management (46%), AI application security (43%), human identity management (40%), and security executive dashboards (40%) as areas lacking sufficient solutions.

The survey also revealed that 54% of CISOs have witnessed personal well-being being affected due to liability concerns, with 32% taking steps to mitigate personal legal risks. Additionally, 54% have experienced increased scrutiny from their superiors over the past year, despite their budgets and responsibilities expanding.