How to adopt workplace security in the AI era

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has taken the world by storm because of its powerful capabilities. It's changed how organizations operate by implementing AI to their advantage to maximize efficiency and increase output.

But with great power comes great risks to data security. Existing threats such as phishing attacks, business email compromise, and cyber hacks have become more sophisticated now with the help of AI. 

You can use AI to your advantage to supercharge your defenses against common workplace threats. AI is smart, available 24/7, and capable of handling complex automated tasks to catch threats and report them. 

Common workplace threats

Before we dive into AI's abilities and how they help you strengthen your defenses, let's get acquainted with some prevalent workplace threats.

Cyber threats and phishing attacks

Let's start with a classic—phishing attacks. These are as old as the internet itself. Bad actors send malicious emails disguised as genuine ones with the intent of tricking the recipient into sharing sensitive information.

Human error

Not all security breaches originate from the outside. Human error accounts for 95% of all security breaches. This can range from a lack of skill in handling confidential data to poor password practices, compromising workplace security.
 

Physical security threats

Critical hardware, such as servers, hard drives, and computers, house valuable company data, making them a lucrative target for cyber criminals. Leaving these physical assets unattended leaves the door open to cyber criminals to access and compromise them.

Infrastructure failure

This one's out of your hands and is rarely avoidable. Natural calamities, such as severe weather, earthquakes, floods, and fire, can disrupt crucial infrastructure that keeps all of your operations up and running. 

Leverage AI to enhance your workplace security

Workplace security is always changing, which means that it always faces threats. With the advent of AI, the threat level has only increased. However, you can leverage AI to strengthen your fortification against these threats.

Proactive security measures with predictive analysis

The best remedy is prevention. By deploying AI that can analyze and predict patterns that lead to a cyber attack well in advance, you can mitigate it by updating your systems and patching existing vulnerabilities. This can also counter infrastructure failure by proactively moving server data from a place of natural disaster to a secure location. 

Enhanced phishing detection with AI

Phishing is the most common form of cybercrime out there. Implementing AI can give you a tool to counter this. AI can comb through any suspicious emails you get and look for cues that are consistent with phishing emails. 

Reducing human intervention with automated incident response

The immediate moments after a security breach are vital to limit the damage. AI can help here by taking swift actions like quarantining affected devices, identifying the cause of the issue and fixing it, and generating a complete analysis to prevent future breaches. 

A strong physical security posture with AI

AI can also make your physical security more robust. With capabilities such as object tracking, facial recognition, and behavior analysis, you can safeguard your physical assets—including your servers and computers—from bad actors. AI can detect any anomalies and warn admins well in advance to foil any attack even before it happens. 

Things to consider while implementing AI for workplace security

While AI has made some aspects of work easier, there are potential downsides you need to consider before implementing it to level up your workplace security. 

Quality of decisions

On the surface, AI may seem competent, smart, and powerful. But it makes decisions without any nuance, compromising your workplace security. You can mitigate this by always having critical decisions double-checked instead of blindly trusting AI.

Human oversight

Despite what others believe, AI is here to aid humans, not replace them. That's why, after deploying AI to fortify your workplace security, it's vital to have human oversight. Humans can monitor AI systems to ensure they're without bias and train them whenever they make mistakes.  

Maintaining an ethical balance

It's common for AI to border on unethical practices like privacy infringement and abusing customer data. This can open doors for lawsuits, which can damage a business's reputation. Have a rigid, transparent policy in place to safeguard employee information. 

Interoperability with existing systems

AI by itself is not a powerful tool. Interoperability with your existing systems is crucial for it to access data to work with. This also allows you to scale up the power of AI with the integration of new systems.

Summing up

For better or worse, AI is here to stay and evolve. It has downsides regarding legal implications and replacing the human workforce, amongst others, but they also have a lot of value to offer, like boosting your workplace security and being efficient.

Restraint is paramount when deploying AI in your workplace. Having proper policies and being transparent in how it's used will go a long way in establishing a positive synergy between humans and AI.