Black Hat Fireside Chat: The role of API Security in mitigating online fraud, emerging GenAI risks

LAS VEGAS — As Black Hat USA 2024 plays out here this week, the disruptive impact of GenAI/LLM at many different levels will be in the spotlight.

Related: GenAI introduces fresh risks

We’re in early days. The productivity gains are ramping up – but so are the exposures.

I had the chance to visit with Amod Gupta, head of product at Traceable; we  discussed how GenAI/LLM is reverberating at the API level, where hyper-interconnectivity continues to intensify. For a full drill down, please give the accompanying podcast a listen.

Companies in all industries are racing to deploy GenAI/LLM chatbot assistants to improve efficiencies and boost revenue. This includes cybersecurity solution providers jumping on the bandwagon to enhance their tools and services.

At this moment, there’s a huge challenge securing the data transmitted via application programming interfaces (APIs) to and from all the novel chatbot assistants, Gupta told me. It’s only a matter of time, he says, before threat actors discover fresh ways to siphon off sensitive data.

Beyond that, other types of threats pivoting off APIs, such as prompt injection attacks, seem certain to escalate. Traceable is keeping close tabs via the installed base of its advanced API security platform. Meanwhile, it, too, is examining ways to leverage GenAI/LLM to reinforce security.

For instance, Gupta described a scenario where a security team member might use a GenAI/LLM assistant to run customized analyses of a unique vulnerability disclosure or perhaps a suspicious pattern of API activity.  “Instead of spending hours sifting through data, an analyst or even a technician could ask our GenAI assistant to perform the heavy lifting,” he says.

How quickly might GenAI/LLM arise as a defacto force-multiplier across cybersecurity? I’ll keep watch and keep reporting.

Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Byron V. Acohido is dedicated to fostering public awareness about how to make the Internet as private and secure as it ought to be.

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