The risks of AI in cybersecurity are growing as artificial intelligence becomes more integrated into business operations. While AI streamlines processes and enhances efficiency, it also introduces security vulnerabilities, especially when employees unknowingly input sensitive data into AI tools. Understanding these risks is crucial to protecting business credentials and preventing cyber threats.
This two-part article reviews the growing sophistication of AI, how criminals are weaponizing AI to get victims to reveal credentials, and the risks of entering data into AI tools. In part two, we’ll identify some red flags to look for to reduce your chances of falling prey to a deepfake.
How AI is Transforming Business Operations
The early days of AI/ML saw the technology limited to those with access to the most powerful computers and deepest pockets – large enterprises, governments, and universities. Today AI is everywhere, most probably in the palm of your hand right now.
From digital assistants and chatbots to content creation, it seems like everyone is using AI at work – including cybercriminals. It’s a tool to streamline business processes, execute transactions and perform routine tasks without human intervention, speed learning curves and evaluations, and polish communications and content. AI is often free, highly accessible, and there are literally thousands of AI-powered tools available.
And therein lies the problem: your employees are using AI without much afterthought as to what happens to the information they pour into an AI platform like AWS, ChatGPT or Grammarly.
Modern AI tools are built by digesting huge amounts of information, or datasets, in a process called training. Once an AI model is trained on behaviors and outcomes in a given area, it can do things like make accurate predictions and complex decisions, suggest improvements, offer alternatives, identify patterns, and detect fraud better and faster than any human.
AI Use Cases in Business: How Companies Are Leveraging AI
Depending upon the product or service your business offers, you may have employees that use AI tools to…
- help compose memos and letters
- proof a new business presentation
- review contracts, legal briefs and verify legal language
- see the level of article sophistication with a readability checker
- strategize about competing products to find areas of differentiation
- brainstorm with chatbots to discuss strategies or undecided points privately
- build and de-bug applications or website code
- identify AI-generated or plagiarized content in the classroom
- scan medical images looking for abnormalities
- predict when a part or machine might fail to schedule proactive maintenance
- help with recruiting and hiring by vetting resumes to help select the best candidate
The common denominator in all these scenarios: the input or scanning of sensitive personal, business or legal data, proprietary corporate strategies, financial information, patient medical images/test results, etc. into one of thousands of AI engines. In some instances, you may not even know that your employees are using AI tools. (If you’re not a good writer and you use an AI tool like ChatGPT to polish your correspondence to make you sound more professional, would you tell anyone?)
Understanding the Risks of AI in Cybersecurity
Every organization should be concerned about their data being stored or scanned into AI services they have no control over, potentially no awareness of their use, and which ones may be vulnerable to data breaches.
Users of AI need to be aware of these risks and recognize the kinds of sensitive data that should not be entered into an AI tool. Just as you wouldn’t enter a credit card number into a website you don’t trust, you have to be careful about what you put in and which AI apps you use.
Why? Because the information your employees enter into an AI tool becomes part of the training model and dataset it will use to continue to evolve and get smarter. So, your legal briefs, business strategies, web content, source code, marketing decks, proprietary machine specs and conditions of use, the personal and employee data scanned from resumes and medical images all become part of the collective – and potentially part of the AI output generated for other users in the future – along with any passwords, PINS, and other credentials that may be embedded in the content.
Take DeepSeek, for example. This new AI platform made a big splash when introduced in January 2025. It rocked financial markets with its low cost, shorter model training periods and open-source architecture that allows any developer to access and modify its code. However, DeepSeek was developed in China and all data is stored on Chinese servers.
There are fears that DeepSeek algorithms have a pro-China bias and will spread misinformation, and that the Chinese government can access data entered by users at will. But that did not stop DeepSeek’s AI assistant from becoming the most downloaded free app on Apple’s App Store when it was released in the US.
To be fair, here at Passpack we use AI to improve our operational and development efficiency. We also leverage the use of AI by our partners for security purposes, like Cloudflare, enhancing the security, performance, and reliability of online services. But we never populate third-party AI tools with customer contact information, and we never have access to your data thanks to Passpack’s zero-knowledge architecture.
How Passpack Helps Mitigate the Risks of AI in Cybersecurity
AI is a double-edged sword. For every constructive use case to speed decision-making, detect fraud or make improvements, there is also a malicious application for the data entered into AI tools to be used against you.
What can you do to minimize your business’ exposure to threats from AI-powered cybercriminals?
- Restrict the AI models your employees can access to those you trust and allow you to retain control over your data.
- Educate employees about the types of data that should never be entered into AI models, especially personal information, passwords and digital credentials.
- Store company intellectual property and digital assets in password-protected systems and use a password and credentials manager like Passpack to control access to those resources.
Hackers’ goals haven’t changed; they’re after the same thing: business credentials. AI simply gives them another tool to mine your data for credentials to launch an attack. Should a bad actor breach an AI platform, all data entered into the training model by anyone who ever used the tool is there for the taking. Don’t make it easy for them. Use Passpack to put an extra layer of protection between you and the latest threats.
In the meantime, see firsthand how Passpack can help protect your business from the risk of employees using AI tools. Try Passpack risk-free. Sign up for a no-obligation 28-day free trial of the Passpack Business Plan today!