The AI industry supposedly to make life easier for humanity. Since it first burst onto the scene it has, arguably, made life more difficult. Consumers and the cybersecurity industry, in particular, are struggling professionally, emotionally, and mentally to understand the value, if not the efficacy, of the technology.
Cyber Protection Magazine evaluated three surveys, from Armorcode, Arkose Labs, and Appdome, over the past few weeks. They agreed the public image of AI is untrustworthy, full of false promises, and something to be feared. In spite of this image, customers believe they must adopt and adapt to the technology, even if they don’t want to.
Defenses difficult
In the survey results from Armorcode, it was clear that respondents believed generative AI is making cybersecurity defense more difficult, raising the market demand for new AI-based tools to enhance defenses. However, in the Appdome survey, users of the tools express doubt at whether those new tools can do the job.
“Well, I mean, the promises are always overblown, right?” said Mark Lambert, chief product officer of Armorcode. Lambert immediately threw his marketing team under the bus. “I don’t think necessarily it’s the technologists. I think it’s the marketeers that overblow it.”
Lambert said that the problem with any technology is not that it solves a specific problem but to apply it to everything as fast as possible, something flippantly called “scaling.” In the case of AI, he said, we need to “look for a problem where AI is a potential solution, doesn’t have to be the solution.”
Rather than expand the use of AI to everything, Lambert wants to find the best possible use of AI, ensuring the success of that application and foster confidence.
That lack of confidence is causing no small amount of confusion and anguish within the customer community. According to a study by Arkose labs, the number one emotion associated with managers and directors regarding dealing with large-scale AI attacks is “stress.” However, in the C-Suite, respondents had a high degree of confidence in the ability to defend against the attacks. That is a significant gap in perception between upper and middle management. It also explains why high-level executives are more willing to deploy AI-driven defenses than the people who actually have to implement them.
Middle management stress
According to Frank Teruel, CFO of Arkose Labs, the C-suite hears that AI mimics human behavior. “They look at this and they go, it’s just another regular human threat. To them, the threat itself remains the same. The anxiety associated with what fuels the threat isn’t felt the same way as it is at the operator level.
However, in the trenches, Teruel said, the operators see and massive increase in volume of threats. “Our respondents are almost up triple digits in terms of the volume of attacks being driven (by AI).”
The result is, when there is a breach, especially of customer data, the action is to plug the new hole and buy identity insurance for the customers. That causes a new level of anxiety at the customer level and damages trust in the company, which is a problem most C-suite denizens miss.
Consumers fed up
In the third survey we reviewed, customers are getting sick and tired of that response. The Appdome annual Global Consumer Survey said 87% of US consumers want mobile brands to proactively prevent mobile fraud rather than reimburse users. But companies have failed to get that message. The survey showed 27% of US consumers don’t believe brands care about protecting mobile users. Now, that might be an insignificant number by itself, but that is a 337% increase since last year’s report. That is a significant trend and it isn’t going to change anytime soon, according to Appdome CEO Tom Tovar.
“The traditional cybersecurity objective is to protect the network, protect the back end, protect the data stores, the big databases in the sky, so as it were, it was not to protect the end user’s experience.”
Tovar said the providers have long believed that customer security was the problem of customers. “Consumers are now raising their hand and saying, nope, it’s your responsibility. I’m concerned that you don’t care, I want the best protection from you, and you need to deliver it to me. That’s not going to change.”
Tovar believes that the further companies move to AI-driven products, the more dissatisfaction they will have with the product offered. And consumers will abandon products that don’t listen.
We are already seeing consumers abandoning social media platforms that are hip deep in AI-driven features. BlueSky and Mastodon are stealing millions of users from Meta and X platforms. Signal, the encrypted, non-profit messaging app has seen a 5000% increase in new users in the past year. That dents in the potential ad revenue for what can only be described as “legacy” social media indicating the level of public dissatisfaction.
Lou Covey is the Chief Editor for Cyber Protection Magazine. In 50 years as a journalist he covered American politics, education, religious history, women’s fashion, music, marketing technology, renewable energy, semiconductors, avionics. He is currently focused on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. He published a book on renewable energy policy in 2020 and is writing a second one on technology aptitude. He hosts the Crucial Tech podcast.