Candace Thorson

Locking your agency’s digital front door isn’t enough to keep it safe from potential cybersecurity threats. Cyber attackers are now using AI to help them make their entrance, making them sneakier, faster and more relentless than in the past. As AI proliferates, closing such common-sense cyber gaps becomes increasingly critical. Yet agencies suffer from persistent vulnerabilities that limit their risk reduction.

Artificial Intelligence, Leadership, Learning In broad terms, government has embraced AI. Agencies are purchasing, piloting and integrating new tools and urging employees to use them. But therein lies a problem. The traditional learning paths that teach workers about new technology can’t keep pace with AI evolutions and don’t teach the judgement skills, such as evaluating outputs, that are vital to AI implementation.

Artificial intelligence has a truly impressive ability to invade agency systems. In just seconds, an AI-empowered malicious actor can break through cyber defenses, steal credentials, and blend into normal network activity using legitimate administrative tools, essentially hiding in plain sight. Traditional security solutions don’t catch the behavior because they look for malicious files that don’t exist.