Hackers are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence, and it’s making cyberattacks far more expensive for businesses. According to IBM’s latest Cost of a Data Breach Report, AI-assisted attacks now account for one in four malicious breaches and cost organizations an average of $6 million to recover from.

The New Cost Of Cyberattacks

One in four malicious data breaches uses artificial intelligence. This is a 56% increase from the previous year. Common methods of attack include deepfake applications to impersonate company members and malware that can bypass data security systems.

Cost of a Data Breach Report - IBM
Image courtesy of IBM Corporation

The cost of these data breaches is also rising. When companies fall victim to an attack that uses artificial intelligence, the average cost to repair the damage is $6 million. That is a full million dollars more than the average cost of a standard data breach. The gap between the cost of the attack and the cost of the damage is rapidly increasing. Hackers can spend a few thousand dollars to execute such an attack. The cost to companies to repair it can run into millions of dollars.

Who Hackers Target Most

Hackers are not randomly selecting the organizations to attack. Many of the most critical infrastructure systems in the United States are targeted by hackers using artificial intelligence. According to an IBM report, 62% of cyberattacks that use artificial intelligence target the vital industries that keep society running.

Advertisement

The top targets are financial services and energy companies. These companies suffer the highest costs from data breaches. A data breach at a financial company can cost them around $6.3 million. This can affect the services provided to the general population.

These hackers are also not limited to using data breaches to extort money from these critical companies. Many of them use ransomware software these days. However, they are more aggressive with their tactics. Instead of locking a company out of its computers, they threaten to ruin its reputation or release its employee data if it does not repay them for the attack.

Defending With Automation

Companies that want to protect themselves from these increasing data breaches must use artificial intelligence to defend their data. Any company that uses automated security software to protect its data can save its organization an average of almost $2 million in the event of a data breach. These software programs can detect a threat faster than any human in the company could.

However, only about a quarter of companies in the United States use these programs to protect their data. The data collected from these companies also shows that the artificial intelligence they build themselves is a target for hackers. Over 20% of companies had their own AI models attacked by external hackers. Most of these hackers bypassed security by targeting weak software plug-ins or cloud servers.

This demonstrates that simply buying new security programs for the company will not fix its data breach problems. If they do not secure their data and ensure it is encrypted, hackers will inevitably find a way into their network.