ChatGPT: A future friend or foe?

By Trellix · February 15, 2023
This story was written by Adam Philpott

These days it seems like you can’t go to a workplace meeting, social gathering, or a family event without ChatGPT coming up in conversation. For the uninitiated, ChatGPT is basically a Chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to respond to questions or prompts in human-like text. Then, you can further refine those results by asking more questions. It is like you are having a conversation with someone else – someone who can take your complex ideas and bring them to life. Many people have used it to make their digital lives more efficient, helping generate text for an email, blog post, social posts, etc. Others have used it to spark some creativity, even asking it to write music, plan kids birthday parties, write a movie script, and more. While the results have been mixed, there is huge potential, especially as its creators adapt and refine it.

However, with new technology, a natural question will eventually surface, “what if ChatGPT could be used for something sinister? Such as creating phishing email, ransomware or even malware?” That is a possibility. Yet, let me be clear about something: ChatGPT in and of itself is not malicious. However, it potentially makes creating malicious code and well worded communications easier. Numerous articles such as this one in ComputerWeekly.com have already been written specifically bringing up this topic. However, in that same article, Steve Povolny, Trellix principal engineer and director discussed that ChatGPT could also potentially aid in cybersecurity by developing code, steps, guided investigations, and plans that can help combat such threats. Organizations can incorporate it into their defensive arsenal to further keep their employees and data safe.

At Trellix, our team at the Advanced Research Center constantly looks into the latest threats, trends, and technology and delivers their findings in various reports. ChatGPT is another technology that they are already investigating and will have guidance and direction soon. In the meantime, what can you do to feel secure? Trellix brings you a living XDR architecture that adapts at the speed of threat actors and delivers advanced cyber threat intelligence. When it comes to phishing and ransomware, Trellix Email Security can help identify, mitigate, and respond to email threats to build a trusted, resilient email environment. Plus, incorporating other Trellix security solutions such as endpoint security, data loss prevention, and network detection and response organizations can feel secure by knowing that Trellix will help keep them protected.

One more interesting thing to bring up about ChatGPT is its ability to take difficult concepts and explain them in simple terms. This is extremely beneficial to us in cybersecurity, an industry plagued with complex terms, a never-ending cycle of acronyms and a serious talent gap (ISC2 estimates the gap to be at 3.4 million people). Interested individuals can ask ChatGPT to explain various cyber security concepts such as XDR, NDR, threat intelligence and more to get a better understanding. Furthermore, we’ve launched #SoulfulWork to broaden the awareness of cybersecurity as a meaningful, engaging career with lots of growth potential. No matter one’s experience or background cybersecurity can be a meaningful soulful career. It will be interesting to see how this new technology develops to make our lives easier, more efficient, more creative, and potentially safer.

Learn more about how Trellix can keep your organization and data safe from existing and new threats with our industry leading products.

To end this blog post I asked ChatGPT to make an acrostic poem about Trellix. Enjoy…
Tough defenses we provide with our security
Rapid response to all potential threats
Efficient systems in place for your protection
Leading the way in XDR technology
Leveraging the latest advancements
Innovative solutions for email security
Xtraordinary service from Trellix.

Further reading:
Should we be worried about malicious use of AI language models? Computer Weekly.
ChatGPT artificial intelligence and the democratization of cybercrime (French language article). France 24.