AI enabled cyber attacks are getting quicker, and we need to keep up.
AI agents are incredibly useful in making tasks easier for the end user. However, bad actors can also use AI to carry out sophisticated cyber attacks. The same qualities that make AI agents useful may be the same ones that could put small organisations at risk.
For small organizations, news rooms and grass roots organizers, budgets are often stretched thin, as work focuses more on delivering impact and change. Cyber security knowledge is often outsourced to third party technologists, and this may result in bottle necks in threat detection.
In Edition Five of the DSA Webinar Series, DSA teamed up with Resilience Technologies to discuss how artificial intelligence can be harnessed for good, in our webinar Ahead of the Threat: AI for Threat Detection. Anthony Sule, who is the Security Director at Resilience Technologies, led the discussion as he shared in depth the cloud based AI tool that Resilience Technologies has developed.
Zeroth Cloud is an AI threat detection tool, developed specifically for civil society organisations, grass roots organisers, journalists and other human rights defenders.
These groups often hold crucial information, and destabilizing them could put not only the organisation at risk, but the communities they serve.
Anthony noted that an organisation only notices when a breach has happened but sadly, by the time a detection has been made it may be too late. Zeroth Cloud steps in to avoid this exact scenario. Built on the open-source Llama 3 foundational model, Zeroth Cloud filters out the noise and helps users figure out any patterns.
For CSOs with time constraints, this pattern detection is crucial. Anthony stressed that if security feels like a burden, it probably is not being done right. The AI layer of Zeroth cloud removes the burden and helps users make sense of immense piles of data. They do not have to worry about the detection and reporting phase because the AI handles that autonomously.
Anthony explained that the Zeroth Cloud is more than a traditional antivirus software. While most antivirus software detects malware using a specific signature, Zeroth Cloud makes detections based on heuristics. Malware usually behaves in the same manner, and Zeroth Cloud examines this behaviour and makes a decision based on this. With traditional antivirus, if the malware changed its signature, it may go undetected, but heuristics captures it each time.
One of the most important features of Zeroth Cloud is that it can help other human rights defenders in the region. Attackers rarely attack one organisation and leave; they keep trying until they find the information that they need. The information that Zeroth collects is centralized and used to inform the broader community. When all members of the community are aware, digital security becomes a collective responsibility and keeps everyone safe.
Cyber security should not have to feel like an extra operational burden, and Zeroth Cloud steps in to solve just that for human rights defenders in the region.