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The Leadership Paradox: Bridging the AI and Cyber Gap
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About this session
Monica Verma, a CISO and keynote speaker on cybercrime, argues that generative AI has broken the basic assumption that seeing and hearing is believing. She opens with a case in which a multinational engineering firm transferred twenty-five million dollars after employees joined a video call with deepfaked executives, then walks through the AI attack landscape: voice clones built from a few seconds of audio, an accelerating deepfake industry, dark-web tools such as WormGPT, FraudGPT and DarkBird that package AI-enabled fraud as a service, and data-poisoning incidents from Microsoft's Tay chatbot to a recent Grok controversy. She distinguishes attacks on AI, meaning data and model poisoning, from AI attacking humans, citing companion chatbots and a lawsuit alleging a chatbot contributed to a teenager's suicide, and warns that autonomous AI agents attacking other AI agents, including resume-screening prompt injection, is already technically possible. Her remedy rests on three pillars: AI governance, using AI deliberately in cyber defense such as SOC anomaly detection and scam-baiting, and responsible AI built on security, ethics, non-bias, transparency and accountability.
We stand at an unprecedented inflection point where the technology that promises to revolutionize our organizations also represents our greatest existential threat. Leaders today face a fundamental paradox: the same AI systems that can enhance our cyber defenses are simultaneously being weaponized by adversaries to create more sophisticated, scalable, and adaptive attacks. Add to that the new existential risks to people, trust and humanity. This keynote addresses the critical leadership challenges of today's AI landscape, and how to harness AI's transformative potential while managing existential cyber, ethical and human risks. Drawing from current threat intelligence and real-world examples, we'll explore how leaders can navigate and bridge the gap before it's too late.
Key takeaways
- Stop relying on seeing or hearing someone on a call as proof of identity; a few seconds of audio is enough to clone a voice convincingly today.
- Stand up real AI governance with named accountability, not just a policy document: define the business purpose, target use cases, and who owns the risk before deploying enterprise AI tools.
- Give employees a safer, managed enterprise LLM instead of trying to ban shadow AI use outright, since restrictions alone push the behavior underground.
- Use AI deliberately in defense where it already works: anomaly detection in the SOC via supervised and unsupervised learning, and deepfake audio to waste scammers' time and trace their location.
- Audit AI systems for bias and explainability before trusting them with decisions like loan approval or resume screening; a black-box model that makes an unexplainable call is a liability, not a shortcut.
Speakers
Monica Verma
Monica Verma is a leading voice in AI, cybersecurity, leadership, cloud computing, and innovation. She works to bridge the security and talent gap, ultimately supporting both business and societal goals. With over 20 years of experience in… Read moreRead less
Monica Verma is a leading voice in AI, cybersecurity, leadership, cloud computing, and innovation. She works to bridge the security and talent gap, ultimately supporting both business and societal goals. With over 20 years of experience in technology, Monica has become an award-winning leader. Furthermore, she is recognized as one of the Top 50 Women in Tech. Through her clear and simple communication, Monica has worked closely with executives and top management. In fact, she has successfully led many security and digital transformation projects across global businesses.
