INTHEBLACK July 2025 - Magazine - Page 36
F E AT U R E
“AI is planned to be the number one investment for most
[small] businesses and, as a result, we think they should
also look to improve their cybersecurity. As you adopt more
advanced technology, the cybersecurity risks increase.”
AZFAR ASA’AD, CPA AUSTRALIA
are expected to reach US$10.5 trillion
in 2025, up from US$3 trillion in 2015.
Criminal tactics have become more
sophisticated, with technologies like AI
now used to send more phishing emails
and text messages, or to produce deepfakes
or voice clones.
However, just as cyber scams are
becoming more elaborate, defensive tactics
are becoming more sophisticated and new
innovations are emerging. In 2020,
for example, cybersecurity patent applications
peaked, with 453 being lodged at patent
offices around the world. And while
cross-industry collaborations are seeking
to build cyber resilience, advances in AI
and cryptology are also fuelling new
cybersecurity measures, pointing to how
cyber scams may be fought in the future.
A GAME OF CAT AND MOUSE
Shameela Gonzalez, financial services
industry lead at cybersecurity company
CyberCX, says an increasingly digital society
has created a “playground for criminals”.
“We’re playing a constant game of cat
and mouse,” she says. “Every time the
good guys come up with strong prevention
techniques, the criminals just have to
get smarter and wiser as to how they
circumnavigate them.”
Gonzalez notes that AI is proving valuable
to scammers for tactics like voice cloning.
“Sometimes, scammers call and
immediately manipulate you to transact,
but more recently we have observed that they
might just try to keep you on the line to take
a voice recording,” she says. “They might
not ask you to do a transaction, but your
voice footprint is being fed into an engine
to be manipulated and turned into a voice
clip that they want.”
While AI is being used by scammers,
it’s also feeding into crime-prevention
techniques. Data from Precedence Research
indicates that the AI-based cybersecurity
solutions market is expected to grow from
US$24.8 billion in 2024 to US$146.5 billion
by 2034.
36 INTHEBLACK July 2025
“Everything we do to detect irregular
behaviour requires looking at large amounts
of data and then building a logic that says,
‘If this looks suspicious, then alert it and
make sure that something is done with it
in triage’,” says Gonzalez. “Enabling
AI behind this allows you to look more
efficiently across vast amounts of data and,
more importantly, to generate new rules
and algorithms that hunt for anomalous
activity faster and more effectively.”
Mary Attard, cybersecurity lead at
Accenture Australia and New Zealand,
says AI is also stepping in to fill skill
shortages in cybersecurity.
“It helps our defence teams protect
against vulnerabilities a lot quicker,
because we would need more people
on the tools. The number of people that
we have with the right capability and
experience in markets like Australia
and New Zealand hasn’t matched the rate
at which security threats have grown.”
CRYPTOLOGY AND COLLABORATION
Advances in cryptology are also changing
the cybersecurity landscape. While evolving
encryption standards dictate the safe flow
of data in and out of organisations, Gonzalez
notes that quantum computing may have
an ability to break them. This may lead
to the development of quantum-resistant
technologies.
“We know that globally there is a race
to develop and operationalise a quantum
computer and eventually make it available
to governments and large enterprises at
scale,” she says. “Our greatest concern is
simply to prepare for threat actors getting
there faster. Internationally, regulators are
already preparing for the development
of post-quantum cryptography standards.”
Collective action and collaboration
are also proving vital in building cyber
resilience. In Australia, for example, the
recently formed National Cyber Intel
Partnership sees organisations like banks
and telecommunications companies working
together to block cyber threats and protect
