Like any tool, AI is a double-edged sword when it comes to email security. Whilst vendors are integrating AI tools to strengthen defences, malicious actors have for some time been actively employing them to bypass security measures.
Here we look at how AI is both increasing your email security risks, and what steps you can take to mitigate them.
Let’s start with how AI is making email less secure:
AI-driven Phishing Attacks
Creating Convincing Emails: AI is being used to create highly personalised and realistic phishing emails. These emails mimic writing styles, vocabulary, and even the tone of voice used by familiar senders, making them difficult to distinguish from legitimate messages.
Bypassing Spam Filters: AI is being used to analyse spam filters and identify the patterns that trigger them. Phishing attackers are now crafting emails that evade detection by these traditional spam filters (for example by creating variations to the content), increasing the chances of reaching your inbox.
AI-driven Social Engineering
Personalisation at Scale: AI is being used to analyse vast amounts of data, such as social media posts, to personalise social engineering tactics used in phishing emails. This enables attackers to target individuals with specific interests, needs, and so on, making the received emails far more believable.
Dynamic Content Generation: AI is being used to generate dynamic email content that changes based on recipient actions. For example, if an email has been opened or a script has been executed, subsequent content is adapted to appear more urgent or specific. Dynamic content is much more convincing to your users and significantly improves the outcome for malicious actors.
Exploiting Email Security Systems
Automating Reconnaissance: AI is automating tasks such as email address harvesting and vulnerability scanning. This allows attackers to identify potential targets and even weaknesses in email security systems far faster and at scale.
Adapting to CAPTCHAs: AI is being used to train bad actor systems to bypass CAPTCHAs and other automated tests designed to distinguish humans from bots. This, in turn is allowing attackers to automate large-scale phishing campaigns.
Now, let’s consider what strategies you can apply to combat the email security challenges posed by AI:
Protective Steps for Individuals
Have a Critical Eye: Don’t be fooled by seemingly personalised or urgent emails. Check email sender addresses, hover over links before clicking to reveal their true destination, and be wary of unexpected attachments.
Use Multi-factor Authentication (MFA): Enable MFA for your email accounts. This adds an extra layer of security by requiring a second verification step beyond your password.
Keep Your Software Up-to-date: Use a reputable email client and keep it updated to ensure the latest security patches are installed.
Beware of Social Engineering Tactics: Try not to share personal information or click on suspicious links in your emails. Legitimate companies will rarely ask you to disclose personal data or pressure you into taking immediate action.
Report Phishing Attempts: Report suspicious emails to your email provider. This will help them improve their spam filtering and identify malicious campaigns.
Proactive Steps for Businesses
Use Advanced Inbound Filtering: Consider improving your filtering solution investments. Investigate options with vendors that deploy language models and machine learning which map what genuine “business-as-usual” email traffic looks like for your organisation and users.
Provide Security Awareness Training: Regularly train employees on how to identify phishing attempts and what the best practices are for secure email communication.
Test Security Awareness: Regularly test users, especially the C-suite, with inert yet convincing email phishing attempts. Combining regular internal tests with external tests and monitoring from specialist service providers is both powerful and kind to your budget.
Deploy SPF, DMARC and DKIM: Correct configuration of these technical measures must be the default position for all your mail hosts. Even with AI tools to hand malicious actors have to expend significant effort to thwart these controls; for the time being at least, a large majority of bad messages fail to meet these technical measures and are more easily filtered.
Operate AI-powered Threat Detection: Apply AI-powered security solutions that analyse email content, sender behaviour, and other factors to identify, block and act on sophisticated phishing attempts.
Apply Endpoint Security: Endpoint security solutions help protect user devices from malware and other threats that are used to steal login credentials or compromise email accounts.
Take a Zero Trust Security Stance: Adopt a zero-trust security model. This approach verifies all users and devices before granting them access to email and other business resources. This reduces the risk of compromised accounts being used for malicious purposes.
Final Thoughts
Security has always been an arms race and AI is no different, we must use them ourselves to fight back effectively.
AI certainly presents many new challenges to email security but by combining technological advancements with user education and security best practices, businesses can reduce the risks posed by this new era of AI-powered email threats.
Is AI Making Email Less Secure?
Like any tool, AI is a double-edged sword when it comes to email security. Whilst vendors are integrating AI tools to strengthen defences, malicious actors have for some time been actively employing them to bypass security measures.
Here we look at how AI is both increasing your email security risks, and what steps you can take to mitigate them.
Let’s start with how AI is making email less secure:
AI-driven Phishing Attacks
AI-driven Social Engineering
Exploiting Email Security Systems
Automating Reconnaissance: AI is automating tasks such as email address harvesting and vulnerability scanning. This allows attackers to identify potential targets and even weaknesses in email security systems far faster and at scale.
Adapting to CAPTCHAs: AI is being used to train bad actor systems to bypass CAPTCHAs and other automated tests designed to distinguish humans from bots. This, in turn is allowing attackers to automate large-scale phishing campaigns.
Now, let’s consider what strategies you can apply to combat the email security challenges posed by AI:
Protective Steps for Individuals
Have a Critical Eye: Don’t be fooled by seemingly personalised or urgent emails. Check email sender addresses, hover over links before clicking to reveal their true destination, and be wary of unexpected attachments.
Use Multi-factor Authentication (MFA): Enable MFA for your email accounts. This adds an extra layer of security by requiring a second verification step beyond your password.
Keep Your Software Up-to-date: Use a reputable email client and keep it updated to ensure the latest security patches are installed.
Beware of Social Engineering Tactics: Try not to share personal information or click on suspicious links in your emails. Legitimate companies will rarely ask you to disclose personal data or pressure you into taking immediate action.
Report Phishing Attempts: Report suspicious emails to your email provider. This will help them improve their spam filtering and identify malicious campaigns.
Proactive Steps for Businesses
Use Advanced Inbound Filtering: Consider improving your filtering solution investments. Investigate options with vendors that deploy language models and machine learning which map what genuine “business-as-usual” email traffic looks like for your organisation and users.
Provide Security Awareness Training: Regularly train employees on how to identify phishing attempts and what the best practices are for secure email communication.
Test Security Awareness: Regularly test users, especially the C-suite, with inert yet convincing email phishing attempts. Combining regular internal tests with external tests and monitoring from specialist service providers is both powerful and kind to your budget.
Deploy SPF, DMARC and DKIM: Correct configuration of these technical measures must be the default position for all your mail hosts. Even with AI tools to hand malicious actors have to expend significant effort to thwart these controls; for the time being at least, a large majority of bad messages fail to meet these technical measures and are more easily filtered.
Operate AI-powered Threat Detection: Apply AI-powered security solutions that analyse email content, sender behaviour, and other factors to identify, block and act on sophisticated phishing attempts.
Apply Endpoint Security: Endpoint security solutions help protect user devices from malware and other threats that are used to steal login credentials or compromise email accounts.
Take a Zero Trust Security Stance: Adopt a zero-trust security model. This approach verifies all users and devices before granting them access to email and other business resources. This reduces the risk of compromised accounts being used for malicious purposes.
Final Thoughts
Security has always been an arms race and AI is no different, we must use them ourselves to fight back effectively.
AI certainly presents many new challenges to email security but by combining technological advancements with user education and security best practices, businesses can reduce the risks posed by this new era of AI-powered email threats.
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