Security News
10 Cybersecurity Companies Making Moves: February 2023
Kyle Alspach
We’re taking a look at the cybersecurity companies that launched products and partner program updates, raised major funding, announced acquisitions or made key executive changes in February.
SlashNext Unveils Generative AI To Thwart Email Attacks
On Feb. 28, SlashNext debuted new capabilities powered by its own generative AI technology, aimed at blocking email-based attacks that are created by similar technology such as OpenAI’s widely used ChatGPT application. The company has spent the past two years developing its own large language model akin to OpenAI’s GPT-3, which is the underlying technology for ChatGPT.
SlashNext is now making the first offering powered by the large language model available to customers and partners — and the company believes it to be the first cybersecurity product of any kind to utilize independently developed generative AI, according to CEO Patrick Harr (pictured). At a time when malicious actors clearly have much to gain from generative artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT, the team at SlashNext believes that “you have to fight AI with AI,” Harr told CRN.
Specifically, the new SlashNext offering is focused on thwarting a type of email impersonation attack known as business email compromise (BEC). The scams typically target executives or other employees of a company, and involve an attacker pretending to be a colleague that is requesting a transfer of funds.
The new generative AI offering from SlashNext works by leveraging the company’s large language model algorithm to proactively anticipate potential BEC threats created using generative AI. The product automatically generates thousands of new variants of BEC attacks — and then consults that information when deciding which incoming emails to block on behalf of users.
