Can Security Experts Leverage Generative AI Without Prompt Engineering Skills?

Professionals throughout industries are exploring generative AI for numerous duties — together with creating info safety coaching supplies — however will it really be efficient?

Brian Callahan, senior lecturer and graduate program director in info expertise and internet sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Shoshana Sugerman, an undergraduate pupil on this similar program, offered the outcomes of their experiment on this subject at ISC2 Safety Congress in Las Vegas in October.

Experiment concerned creating cyber coaching utilizing ChatGPT

The primary query of the experiment was “How can we practice safety professionals to manage higher prompts for an AI to create practical safety coaching?” Relatedly, should safety professionals even be immediate engineers to design efficient coaching with generative AI?

To handle these questions, researchers gave the identical task to a few teams: safety specialists with ISC2 certifications, self-identified immediate engineering specialists, and people with each {qualifications}. Their job was to create cybersecurity consciousness coaching utilizing ChatGPT. Afterward, the coaching was distributed to the campus group, the place customers offered suggestions on the fabric’s effectiveness.

The researchers hypothesized that there could be no important distinction within the high quality of coaching. But when a distinction emerged, it could reveal which expertise have been most vital. Would prompts created by safety specialists or immediate engineering professionals show more practical?

SEE: AI brokers could be the subsequent step in growing the complexity of duties AI can deal with.

Coaching takers rated the fabric extremely — however ChatGPT made errors

The researchers distributed the ensuing coaching supplies — which had been edited barely, however included principally AI-generated content material — to the Rensselaer college students, college, and employees.

The outcomes indicated that:

• People who took the coaching designed by immediate engineers rated themselves as more proficient at avoiding social engineering assaults and password safety.
• Those that took the coaching designed by safety specialists rated themselves more proficient at recognizing and avoiding social engineering assaults, detecting phishing, and immediate engineering.
• Individuals who took the coaching designed by twin specialists rated themselves more proficient on cyberthreats and detecting phishing.

Callahan famous that it appeared odd for individuals skilled by safety specialists to really feel they have been higher at immediate engineering. Nonetheless, those that created the coaching didn’t usually fee the AI-written content material very extremely.

“Nobody felt like their first cross was adequate to offer to individuals,” Callahan stated. “It required additional and additional revision.”

In a single case, ChatGPT produced what appeared like a coherent and thorough information to reporting phishing emails. Nonetheless, nothing written on the slide was correct. The AI had invented processes and an IT assist electronic mail tackle.

Asking ChatGPT to hyperlink to RPI’s safety portal radically modified the content material and generated correct directions. On this case, the researchers issued a correction to learners who had gotten the incorrect info of their coaching supplies. Not one of the coaching takers recognized that the coaching info was incorrect, Sugerman famous.

Disclosing whether or not trainings are AI-written is essential

“ChatGPT might very properly know your insurance policies if you know the way to immediate it appropriately,” Callahan stated. Specifically, he famous, all of RPI’s insurance policies are publicly out there on-line.

The researchers solely revealed the content material was AI-generated after the coaching had been carried out. Reactions have been blended, Callahan and Sugerman stated:

• Many college students have been “detached,” anticipating that some written supplies of their future could be made by AI.
• Others have been “suspicious” or “scared.”
• Some discovered it “ironic” that the coaching, centered on info safety, had been created by AI.

Callahan stated any IT crew utilizing AI to create actual coaching supplies, versus working an experiment, ought to disclose using AI within the creation of any content material shared with different individuals.

“I feel we have now tentative proof that generative AI is usually a worthwhile software,” Callahan stated. “However, like every software, it does include dangers. Sure components of our coaching have been simply mistaken, broad, or generic.”

A number of limitations of the experiment

Callahan identified just a few limitations of the experiment.

“There’s literature on the market that ChatGPT and different generative AIs make individuals really feel like they’ve discovered issues regardless that they might not have discovered these issues,” he defined.

Testing individuals on precise expertise, as a substitute of asking them to report whether or not they felt that they had discovered, would have taken extra time than had been allotted for the research, Callahan famous.

After the presentation, I requested whether or not Callahan and Sugarman had thought-about utilizing a management group of coaching written fully by people. They’d, Callahan stated. Nonetheless, dividing coaching makers into cybersecurity specialists and immediate engineers was a key a part of the research. There weren’t sufficient individuals out there within the college group who self-identified as immediate engineering specialists to populate a management class to additional cut up the teams.

The panel presentation included information from a small preliminary group of contributors — 51 check takers and three check makers. In a follow-up electronic mail, Callahan instructed TechRepublic that the ultimate model for publication will embrace further contributors, because the preliminary experiment was in-progress pilot analysis.

Disclaimer: ISC2 paid for my airfare, lodging, and a few meals for the ISC2 Safety Congress occasion held Oct. 13–16 in Las Vegas.