The buzz around artificial intelligence may be shifting from “what can it do to help us?” to “how can it hurts us?” An expanding body of evidence suggests AI is being harnessed more and more effectively by threat actors, according to researchers at Darktrace, which noted a 135 percent increase in novel social engineering attacks targeting its customers over the course of 2023, the same period when ChatGPT saw popular adoption. In turn, nearly three-quarters of the 1,500 cybersecurity professionals surveyed by the cybersecurity company agree that AI-powered threats now pose a significant challenge for their organization. Nine in 10 survey participants agreed that AI-powered threats will continue to have a significant impact on their organizations for the next one to two years. Interestingly enough, a majority of cybersecurity professionals (65 percent) indicated that their organizations consider AI-powered threats a separate issue from non-AI-powered threats. This distinction, however, may prove less and less meaningful, argued Darktrace analysts, as it becomes more difficult to determine whether or not an attack is AI-powered and as AI-powered threats make up a progressively larger portion of the attacks that organizations face. On the other hand, 95 percent of cybersecurity professionals believe AI can improve speed and efficiency in preventing, detecting, responding to and recovering from threats. Insufficient AI knowledge and skills, as well as a shortage of personnel are the top inhibitors to a successful defense. Communications technology company Unified Office announced that it is opening up its AI platform that empowers businesses to build their own custom, drag-and-drop, AI-powered communications services with unprecedented ease. For those businesses wanting to create more sophisticated services, APIs will be made available via a software development kit. This platform also provides access to Unified Office’s industry-specific, augmented small AI language models, tools and scalable, cost-effective infrastructure. “We believe that the power of AI should be accessible to everyone,” said Ray Pasquale, founder and CEO of Unified Office. “By opening up our platform, we’re enabling businesses of all sizes to harness the power of no-code, drag-and-drop AI services, virtually eliminating the need for a dedicated software engineering staff. Our approach is very different from those of the largest AI companies that typically require an expensive multivendor ecosystem in order to develop AI-based services, which puts it beyond the reach of most SMBs.” The offering takes advantage of the TCNIQ AI Analytics platform, which utilizes drag-and-drop building blocks inside its WYSIWYG Workflow Builder product. Unified Office also offers a suite of its own AI services available directly to customers or as a white-labeled offering through its many partners. Unified Office’s AI services include products such as EngageIQ to rapidly train staff while delivering a great customer experience; Sentiment Analysis; which detects caller sentiment, identifying positive or negative tones and/ or pre-determined keywords, and AI-based Whisper Coaching to provide immediate coaching and feedback to customer service reps. AI Impacting Cyber Threat Landscape Unified Office Opens AI Communications Platform for SMBs AI & AUTOMATIONSource: YouMail Robocall Index Strongly agree Somewhat agree Somewhat disagree Strongly disagree Source: Darktrace Feb-1 Aug-1 Aug-1 Feb-1 Feb-1 Aug-1 Aug-2 Aug-2 Aug-2 Aug-2 Aug-2 Feb-2 Feb-2 Feb-2 Feb-2 Feb-2 AI-powered cyber-threats 26.8% 5.6% 46.8% 20.7% 10.5% 30.0% 24.8% 34.7% 49.8% 2.7% 39.9% 7.7% 54.2% 2.8% 34.1% 8.8% ...are already having a significant impact on my organization ...will likely have a significant impact on my organization 1-2 years from now ...will continue to have a significant impact on my organization well into the future ...are not considered by my organization to be a separate issue or risk from non-AI-powered cyber threats 0 20 40 60 80 100 8 CHANNELVISION | MARCH - APRIL 2025
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