Last week, I was in Huntsville, Alabama for a national security event. Before that, I had a coffee meeting with a strategic partner. Despite a busy day, I still wanted to prepare well for the meeting to explore opportunities for collaboration that will ultimately further protasec’s mission of building resilient communities through cybersecurity.

What did I do? I opened ChatGPT on my phone, briefly described the upcoming meeting (avoiding any sensitive information of course) and asked the AI to help organize objectives and talking points. Within seconds, I had a detailed meeting outline, likely more thorough and with more considerations than I’d have created in half an hour.

This wasn’t an isolated experience. I’ve adopted AI into my daily routine, boosting my productivity, broadening my thinking, and skyrocketing my efficiency.

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How AI is driving organizational efficiency

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a major player in efficiency conversations but not exclusively in the ways we’d like. Yes, it’s helping organizations work smarter, faster, and more securely when used properly.

AI is a game-changer for lean teams trying to do more with less. No matter your industry or job function, the right AI tools (including automations within software as well as generative models such as ChatGPT and Gemini) can:

• Improve visibility across teams
• Streamline workflows
• Eliminate unnecessary work
• Enhance creative problem-solving
• Flag issues before they escalate
• Allow teams to focus on work that requires human judgment.

For small and midsized organizations especially, these gains save time and money, allowing them to compete with their larger counterparts.

As you now know, I use AI daily. I’m careful not to share sensitive data and validate AI outputs for accuracy and completeness. Still, I’ve found that utilizing AI helps our business enjoy higher levels of efficiency.

Here are additional ways I use AI to boost efficiency in my work:

• Prioritization of action items: Project management tool automations highlight tasks as due dates approach, keeping me on track.

• Actionable relationship management: Our CRM uses AI to auto-attach items to the appropriate contact, company, etc., simultaneously reducing double and triple work. The built-in AI also summarizes key details about relationships, providing our team visibility without any manual steps.

• Thought organization: AI is valuable in preparing for speaking engagements, outlining blogs like this one, and brainstorming when I’m a bit stuck.

• Refined templates: AI contributes to continuous improvement of templates, such as client proposals, in which we strive to balance detail with clarity.

• Increased information consumption: AI can distill news and industry articles into succinct bullet points, allowing me to consume higher quantities of information.

• Business operations strategizing: AI provides guidance informed by productivity best practices, thus elevating calendar management, workflows, and internal processes.

Many organizations are using AI in similar ways to increase efficiency. Which of these have you and your team adopted?

The link between efficiency and cyber resilience

Efficiency and cyber resilience go hand in hand. As discussed in my previous blog, cyber resilience refers to the ability of an organization to continue operations and maintain data security even during a cyber incident.

Increased efficiency usually brings several benefits:

• More strategic use of technical tools

• Stronger operational processes

• Better collaboration across teams of which are important to cyber resilience.

Each of these are critical to cyber resilience.

How AI factors in

If AI can do so much to increase speed, productivity, and work quality within general operations, imagine what it can do for cybersecurity efforts, thus improving cyber resilience.

How AI can drive efficiency in service of cyber resilience:

• Faster threat detection

• Smarter alert prioritization

• Proactive vulnerability management

• Cross-department operational efficiency

• Enhanced decision-making

Check out protasec Founder/Chief Security Officer Josh Harr’s recent blog for more information.

Remember, AI cannot and should not replace humans. Instead, it empowers humans to operate at their highest potential by providing better information, reducing distractions, and enabling more strategic processes. AI-powered security tools are immensely valuable to smaller organizations without dedicated technical teams. However, these tools should be regarded as partners, not substitutes, for humans. While AI can alert us when action is needed, it cannot fully replace the critical decisions and interventions that only humans can make.

Still, the argument for AI improving efficiency, and therefore cyber resilience, is strong.

What about the bad guys?

Yep, you guessed it. AI isn’t just making the good guys more efficient. It’s doing the same for cyber threat actors. It’s helping cyber threat actors work smarter, faster and – unfortunately – more effectively. AI is allowing cyber threats to be more scalable, personalized, and efficient than ever before.

How adversaries are leveraging AI for cyber attacks:

• Convincing phishing email/text creation: This one requires a few sub-bullet points.
  • Gone are the days of being able to spot a phish because grammar is off. AI helps polish grammar and translate malicious messages into countless languages, even capturing local dialects and slang.
  • AI can mimic company tones and colleagues/stakeholders’ communication styles, boosting impersonation believability.
  • AI can craft targeted phishing emails using information found on the internet. This can be as easy as feeding AI a target’s social media handle and asking it to draft a believable phishing message referencing information a friend would know.
    
• Deepfake audio and video creation: AI-generated voices and video have been used to impersonate executives, pressuring employees into wiring funds or disclosing credentials. Threat actors also use AI to mimic family members in need, pressuring targets to send money or other information.
  • Note: All it takes is three seconds of a voice recording to produce audio that matches the source voice by 87%.
  • Note: Limit where your image and voice appear online.
    
• Reconnaissance automation: AI can scan thousands of websites and public records at once, identifying vulnerable infrastructure, exposed data, or personal details that can be used to tailor attacks. This makes it easier for threat actors to perform higher quantities of attacks with precision.
  
• Faster zero-day exploitation: AI increasingly can test and exploit vulnerabilities without needing highly skilled human hackers. Threat actors can exploit vulnerabilities before most even know they exist.
  

Bottom line: Cyber threat actors no longer need large budgets or elite technical skills. With the right AI tools, a small operation can launch highly targeted attacks at scale.

We all must be alert and utilize the available resources and tools to bolster cybersecurity and cyber resilience.

Conclusion

Conversation around AI swings between utopian and dystopian. The reality? AI is just a tool. The humans who use it ultimately decide if it is good or bad.

AI helps us improve operations, strengthen relationships, detect suspicious activity faster, reduce repetitive tasks, and predict risks more accurately. This ultimately improves organizational efficiency and cyber resilience.

At the same time, AI helps cyber threat actors launch more sophisticated, targeted attacks with less time and money.

Here are additional recommendations to stay ahead in this fast-moving landscape:

• Stay human-led: Use AI to support humans, not replace them.
  
• Validate outputs: AI is only as reliable as the data on which it is trained. Always double-check its work.
  
• Keep in mind the mindset of cyber threat actors: Many of the same AI tools you use for efficiency and cyber resilience may be used against you by cyber threat actors. Plan and prepare accordingly.
  
• Invest in awareness: Equip your team with the knowledge and resources so they can use AI to bolster efficiency and cyber resilience while staying safe.
  

Using AI to improve efficiency and cyber resilience within your organization is smart and increasingly necessary in order to stay ahead of competitors and cyber threat actors. If you have questions or want to learn more about how your organization can stay safe amid this exciting time of rapid technological advancement, we at protasec are here to help. Reach out to us at in**@******ec.com.

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This blog is shared in reference to protasec’s Business Continuity Awareness and Resilience Week campaign. Learn more about this week at The Business Continuity Institute’s website. Visit www.protasec.com/blog to read more insights.