Security Vulnerabilities Through Chatbots

Close up portrait of women employee looking at laptop

Security Vulnerabilities Through Chatbots

To make good decisions, your business depends upon accurate and reliable information. If the integrity of that information is compromised, so is your business. This issue has risen to prominence recently with ‘fake news’ that has begun swirling around major politicians.

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) personas allows for the creation of chatbots that will soon be indistinguishable from humans. Attackers will soon be able to use these chatbots to spread misinformation targeting commercial organizations.

Without ever breaching an organization’s digital boundary an attacker could damage that organization’s reputation by spreading convincing misinformation about its business practices or products. A single attacker could deploy hundreds of chatbots, each spreading malicious information and rumors over social media and news sites.

This threat is why chatbot communication should be encrypted. As you know, without encryption, it becomes far easier for hackers to break through your security walls. Encryption has been one of the most widely used and proven methods of securing data for many decades, providing peace of mind that data will be handled in a secure manner. Public chatbots are not as simple, because their encryption is more difficult.

Training of employees is the only current solution to this very likely scenario. Tell your employees to refrain from clicking on links sent by chatbots or customers. Unfortunately, until technology can identify these malicious chatbots, there are no other solutions to this problem. It’s about being aware that a chatbot may not be what it says it is.

So, with the popularity of chatbots exploding, it only makes sense that some hacker will figure out a way to make them malicious and intrusive. There are currently no solutions to this potential risk, but it is better to be prepared … Train your employees and be mindful.

I hope this gives you some food for thought in helping your business avoid this risk of a potential security attack. Stay tuned for more next week.