Imagine the following scenario: On a busy Monday morning at a major law firm, an associate attorney receives an email from a senior partner asking for his thoughts on a legal brief that must be filed that morning. This request is odd, because the associate has never spoken to or worked with this partner. However, wanting to appear capable and helpful, the associate opens the link attached to the email to reveal a blank document. Little does he know that he just made the entire firm vulnerable to a business email attack by a threat actor. His actions will lead to potential encryption of firm data, a high ransom demand and public professional embarrassment.

In the current new age of technology and capability, threat actors are cashing in by using various tools in their arsenal, including generative artificial intelligence (gen AI), to penetrate security safeguards in place by businesses. Threat actors, once embedded in a compromised computer system by way of some vulnerability, are learning patterns and structures of the computer system host and wait until a financial opportunity, such as a large wire payment, arises. Gen AI and other modern cyber tools make it increasingly difficult to detect breaches and leave businesses vulnerable to wire fraud, data encryption and ransomware, among other threats.