Emerging technologies like blockchain and AI should be seen as an opportunity and a threat, according to Professor Lisa Short, director and co-founder of Hephaestus Collective, whose rousing opening keynote addressed attendees of Infosecurity Magazine's Autumn Online Summit - EMEA 2021.
Short began by describing the vast digital shift that has taken place in recent years, noting that advancements in technology mean “revolutions” are now occurring in less than a generation. For example, the development of technologies like AI, blockchain and IoT has meant that in the past two years, tech changes that previously would have taken seven years are now being achieved in just six months.
She also provided some startling statistics around the rate of information being created and published since the advent of social media and user-generated content. Short observed that from the beginning of recorded history to 2003, the entire written works of humanity amounted to five exabytes of data. Since 2003, this same amount of data has been created every two days on average.
These trends provide enormous benefits — as highlighted by the ability to shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there are reasons for concern. Technologies such as GPT-3 are now capable of recording our habits and knowledge “and influence our thoughts,” making the digital world very “pervasive.” Currently, over half the world’s population are internet users, and this is quickly growing.
Short added it is estimated that by 2023, 70% of all enterprise workloads will be in the cloud, meaning there will be a “lot of material going into a pervasive digital space that is in fact not our computer, it’s on somebody else’s.”
This rapid digitization increases the risk of data breaches. The cost is predicted to surpass $6tn in 2021 and $10.5tn in 2025. Short pointed out this cost, which is just one aspect of infosecurity, is higher than every natural disaster globally in a year and is “considered a bigger threat to humanity than nuclear weapons of mass destruction.” The entire sector spend on cybersecurity, including ransomware costs, is believed to have reached $1tn per annum.
She highlighted that many security experts cite the pace of technology adoption as a significant contributing factor to the increasingly dangerous cyber-threat landscape. This view is because “many of the latest tech-powered business strategies — such as storing massive amounts of data — introduce exponentially more risk.”
Short, therefore, believes a mindset shift is needed, which views advanced technologies as an opportunity to enhance safety and trust online rather than a threat. As Short put it, “invest more in what we have to gain than what we spend to lose.”
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