The Gist: ocial engineering attacks have become the costliest cybersecurity problem for businesses. The 2023 FBI IC3 report found thatBEC attacks alone accounted for $2.9 billion in losses. As fraudsters have leveraged technological advancements to power more sophisticated attacks, Agentic AI is next.
Agentic AI agents interpret the context of data and make decisions to meet a specific goal. Agentic AI has the capacity for memory, enabling it to learn and improve as it collects more data and performs more tasks. Simply put – agentic AI presents a frightening new reality for organizations navigating the increasingly complex social engineering landscape.
How Agentic AI will be weaponized:
- Multi-stage attacks: Given that agentic AI possessesmemory, it can be instructed to leverage data from previous interactions with a potential victim and use it to formulate a second or third attack stage. With the ability to store and learn from data, these agents can autonomously map outattacks tailored to their intended target.
- Multi-modal attacks: These AI agents can also conductattacks through different communication mediums. After identifying a target, AI agents can assault them with a barrage of phishing emails or calls utilizing deepfake technology to increase their chances of success.
- Adaptive spear phishing: Rather than being prompt-based, agentic AI operates autonomously. These agents can collect data from various sources like social media profiles and craft particular phishing emails without the criminals’ input. Messages sent can be adapted to specific events or the target’s location, like a holiday, business trip, or acquisition, ultimately making them more believable and dangerous.
Trustmi’s Take:
The autonomous nature of agentic AI will lower the barrier of entry for fraudsters, leading to more sophisticated, near impossible-to-detect attacks Traditional security methods cannot prevent the onslaught of incoming threats. To safeguard against them, organizations must combat AI with AI. Social engineering attack scan be stopped by investing in a behavioral AI solution that integrates with existing ERP systems and provides end-to-end visibility across the payment landscape while detecting anomalies across the organization.
To learn more about how to prevent sophisticated social engineering attacks, book a demo with Trustmi today!
