Interpol warns AI is accelerating cyber fraud — CNBC

At Tech Week Singapore, Interpol's chief information security officer, Bjørn R. Watne, said that artificial intelligence is making cyber fraud faster, more scalable and harder to detect. According to him, the technology does not create entirely new criminal methods but enhances already known deception and fraud schemes.

As CNBC reports, malicious actors can use AI to target many potential victims simultaneously. Improvements in machine translation and the development of digital identities are also increasingly making it harder to distinguish genuine interactions from fraudulent ones.

Protecting critical assets

Watne advised companies to first identify their most important assets on which business continuity depends, as well as determine who may be interested in stealing them or disrupting their operation. Businesses should then use threat intelligence to understand the methods and technologies of such adversaries and tailor their defenses accordingly.

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In his view, organizations should not try to protect themselves against all possible threats at once if they are not the target of specific attacks. Countermeasures will differ depending on whether a company is dealing with criminals who exploit an opportunity or actors behind sophisticated, long-running cyberattacks.

Risks of agentic AI

Separately, the Interpol representative warned about the risks of agentic AI — systems capable of performing actions on behalf of users. He noted that errors by such systems can have not only informational but also physical consequences, particularly when AI is used in devices, cars and autonomous vehicles.

Watne also drew attention to the high level of trust people place in new technologies. Unlike financial services, where users more often use PIN codes and consider risks, they may grant applications and devices access more readily without paying sufficient attention to security.