The Indigo hack is bad. Will AI make cyber threats worse?

Indigo bookstore
Plurilock CEO Ian Paterson discusses the economics of AI cyber threats and Canada's response with Bill C-26.

Indigo got hacked last week.

“The deepfake technology that is part of this new rise of generative AI tools I think will have a very deleterious effect on the current state of cyber defences.”

As of this recording, the company’s website is still down, likely costing it millions of dollars.

That’s not good.

If you’ve listened to an episode of the BetaKit Podcast this year, you’ll know we’ve spent quite a bit of time exploring the implications of generative AI—what truly looks to be the next tech epoch.

So, what’s the impact of AI on cybersecurity?

To answer that question we have Ian Paterson, CEO of Canadian cybersecurity company Plurilock. As you might guess, my co-host Rob Kenedi and I go quite deep on weird, sci-fi worst case scenarios, which Ian kindly humours (and maybe check-raises).

But one of the most interesting concerns he raised on this podcast is that new generative AI tools might improve the ecomonics of scale for black hat behaviour well beyond what we’re seeing today.

That’s not good.

Of course, because this is the BetaKit Podcast, we also spend some time discussing some upcoming federal legislation Bill C-26, which is focused on enacting a Critical Cyber Systems Protection Act.

Is that good?

Let’s dig in.


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The BetaKit Podcast is hosted by Douglas Soltys & Rob Kenedi. Edited by Kattie Laur. Sponsored by ventureLAB. Feature image courtesy Wikimedia.

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