Five Eyes issues 'call to action' as AI becomes 'fundamental' cyber security threat – National
Cybersecurity agencies in Canada and its Five Eyes partners have released a public “call to action” report that warns artificial intelligence is “rapidly transforming cyber security,” allowing attackers to exploit vulnerabilities at an ever-increasing pace.
At the same time, the joint advisory says AI offers “powerful tools” to strengthen cyber defenses and urges organizations to integrate them into their core business strategies.
“While AI will help us improve cyber security in the long run, it will also accelerate the speed, scale, and complexity of cyber threats,” said the Canadian Center for Cyber Security and its partners in the US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
“The timeline is not years, it's months.”
The advice says the advent and rapid development of edge AI models that can find and exploit unknown vulnerabilities faster than humans means that cyber risk “can no longer be considered a technical problem.”
“This is at the heart of business risk and leadership responsibility,” he said. “Boards and management must ensure that cyber resilience is effective and works under pressure.
“It is not enough to have controls,” the advice continued. “Leaders must be confident that those controls will perform during a real incident. This requires rethinking the long-standing trade-off and using AI intentionally to strengthen defenses — not just to improve efficiency.”
Organizations in all sectors are urged to take “urgent” measures to limit system access, invest in training and preparedness, speed up agreements and schedules for security review and vulnerability patching, and enforce stronger permissions and authentication for authenticated users.
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However, cyber organizations acknowledge that “breaches will happen” as ever-evolving AI models are used to detect new vulnerabilities, including “zero-day vulnerabilities” where a solution or patch does not yet exist.
The advice is that those same AI tools can also be integrated by organizations to find vulnerabilities early, respond to breaches quickly and monitor “unusual behavior,” all while reducing costs.
By doing so, the organizations say, organizations can ensure “continuity of operations and market confidence” – as long as leaders act quickly.
“Enemies are already using AI to move faster and more efficiently. Defenders must do the same,” the adviser said.
“Leaders who act now will reduce exposure, strengthen resilience, and build trust with customers, partners, and investors. Those who delay will face increased and avoidable risks.”
The advice comes on the back of the federal government's revised AI strategy which aims to significantly increase the adoption of AI across the public and private sectors.
Among the key actions listed under one of the main pillars of the strategy, “protecting Canadians and protecting our democracy,” is a commitment to accelerate AI research and the deployment of cyber security and data protection.
It also promises to “continue to work with frontier AI companies” to ensure that critical systems are protected from AI-based cyber and national security threats.
Earlier this month, Ottawa confirmed it had gained access to Anthropic's powerful Mythos 5 AI model, and was using it to assess the security and resilience of government and critical systems.
Anthropic said Mythos 5 was “so powerful” that it was limiting its use to select customers because of its ability to outperform human cybersecurity experts in detecting and exploiting computer vulnerabilities.
However, the US government soon after ordered Anthropic to withhold Mythos and its publicly released counterpart Fable 5 from foreign use, citing national security concerns.
Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters in Ireland that the move underscores the need for Canada and other nations to develop their own forms of AI.
“The situation we're in right now with Mythos and Fable is something that can happen through overreliance on certain models,” said Carney.
“No one has sinned in this situation, but we will be doing something bad if we don't accept this, don't learn, don't build and divide.”
-via files from the Associated Press
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