Matthew RosenquistFounder & CISO Advisor, Cybersecurity Insights · CISO, Cybersecurity Strategist, & Industry Advisor

Real AI Threats - Beyond the Hype

5 Feb 2025 · 2 min

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1:35

In this short conversation, Matthew Rosenquist contrasts sensational AI‑related cyber‑threat headlines with the practical ways threat actors are actually leveraging AI and generative AI today. He argues that deepfakes—while technically feasible—are extremely rare and not among the top cyber‑risk categories. Instead, the real danger lies in attackers using AI as a productivity tool to amplify existing tactics, especially social engineering and phishing. Rosenquist notes that human‑targeted “wetware” attacks account for roughly 60‑90 % of all cyber incidents, and AI is being employed to automate and personalize these attacks, making them more frequent and severe.

Chapters

Let's start with ways that threat actors are using AI and GenAI to increase the frequency and severity of cyberattacks.
Got it. Now, there's a sexy way to talk about this, which isn't all that relevant, but it's really sexy headlines, eye-catching, people are interested. And then there's the kind of reality of it, where the risks are. And I'll briefly touch on the sexy, right? When we talk about deepfakes, we talk about, Oh, we're going to impersonate the CEO's image and get on a video bridge and do some kind of fraud. Is it possible? Absolutely. Is it happening? Rarely. Is it the primary threat that we have to worry about? Absolutely not. Nope. Nope. Not even in the top 10, top 50, right? But is it sexy to see on the headlines and worry about and vendors jump up and go, oh, I can protect you against those deep fake, you know, business, you know, median impersonations and okay, not relevant. The real area where we see AI is attackers realize it's a tool. It's a really good tool at many different areas and they're leveraging it to do what they currently do. So for example, social engineering, phishing is one piece of that. Social engineering is a powerhouse for the attackers. In fact, depending on the metrics you wanna look at, between 60 and 90+ percent of all attacks involve some kind of wetware—humans, us big bags of water being manipulated, typically through social engineering.