Talk Title: The Future of Fear: Social Engineering with an AI Twist

Talk Abstract:

AI has become a very useful productivity tool and a powerful way to come up with fresh ideas and strategies. Unfortunately, cybercriminals are also finding value in how they conduct their elicit business ventures. Social engineering is an incredibly effective tactic for cyber criminals to gain initial network access, and AI is providing them with the tools they need to twist emotions into a weapon against us.

Most social engineering tactics rely on a person's discomfort in pushing back against an attacker or a fear of a negative consequence if they don't perform an action. Generative AI and other modern tools that allow bad actors to spoof phone calls, text messages or emails, are making it much easier two attack organizations and to scale their operations with far less effort.

In this session we will look at how emotions are used against people, where AI is making this easier and more effective, plus some defensive techniques to help counter these advances.

This session will cover:

• Social engineering principles and tactics

• How AI will make these tactics more effective

• Defensive strategies against the evolving social engineering threat