Protect your business from artificial intelligence
Taking some simple steps can help to protect your business from risks that come from artificial intelligence.
What it is
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is technology that's designed to do things that normally require human intelligence. AI can be used to scrape public data off your website, or to quickly create believable scams and
when a scammer pretends to be someone else, like a bank or NZ Post, usually via email, trying to get your personal information or even money.
Learn more about artificial intelligence
While AI tools make it easier for scammers, the scams still work the same way. The scams only work if you or your staff provide information, click a link or send the scammers money.
How to protect your business from AI
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Install software updates
Keeping your devices and
up to date is one of the most effective things you can do to keep your system safe.a set of instructions for your computer, made up of code. Apps, games, and browsers are all examples of software.
Install any updates to software and operating systems as soon as they’re available – set your system preferences to install updates automatically if you can. Make sure staff know to do this too.
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Implement two-factor authentication (2FA)
Implementing
means that anyone who logs in to your system will need to provide something else on top of their username and password, to verify that they are who they say they are. You can implement it on internal systems and your customer-facing systems.A security setting that needs an extra piece of information, such as a text code or fingerprint, to log into your account. Short for 'two-factor authentication'.
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Secure your devices
Enable anti-malware software on any device that accesses your business data or systems. This includes both company-owned devices and any personal devices your staff use for work.
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Secure your network
There are different types of security features you can add to your
to filter traffic and restrict access.a group of connected devices
Firewalls help control where connections go, and proxies can act as an intermediary between different computers or networks. For example, you can use a web proxy to send traffic from your business network to the internet, and it could filter that traffic and prevent any bad traffic – to sites hosting
for example – from getting through.refers to viruses and other pieces of software than can infect your devices. Short for 'malicious software'
Get help
You can report an online issue or security incident like this to us at NCSC NZ.
NCSC NZ’s Insights and Intelligence team produces periodic threat reports to illustrate and identify notable trends in information we collect. This leads to highlighting threats and possible actions or interventions for consideration.
Threat reports – NCSC NZ(external link)
NCSC NZ is in the process of creating a series of sharable threat reports on AI.
The use of AI to target regional, culturally significant language groups – NCSC NZ(external link)