As businesses continue to leverage generative AI technologies to optimize their operations, ChatGPT has become one of the most popular tools for various use cases, ranging from handling customer inquiries and automating everyday tasks to creating content and personalized business messaging.
If your organization is considering adopting ChatGPT for business operations or has already done so, it is imperative to pay close attention to ChatGPT risks associated with its data-storing and generative capabilities. Let’s review the most common ChatGPT threats and what you can do to protect your company from them:
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Understanding ChatGPT in Business Operations
Whether you have considered adopting ChatGPT yourself, generative AI is irreversibly changing how organizations operate. As of 2023, more than one-third of Canadian companies were looking at ways to use generative AI, and, chances are, this percentage has only risen in recent months.
Ethical and cybersecurity debates aside, the AI-backed tool offers endless opportunities for businesses looking to optimize their business operations. From customer support chatbots and auto-generated communication messages to project management automation and code debugging, the uses of ChatGPT for business are plentiful. Alas, this irresistible versatility can come at a price: the risk of ChatGPT security threats.
Benefits of Using ChatGPT in Business Operations
Overlooking the ChatGPT security risks, the tool offers countless benefits when being used in business operations, including enhanced customer satisfaction, streamlined communication, and improved efficiency and productivity.
Enhanced Customer Satisfaction
One of the greatest benefits of using ChatGPT in business operations is its ability to truly transform the customer experience by providing instant response to customer inquiries 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. While human customer service representatives may be unavailable during peak periods or off-hours, AI-powered chatbots never take a break. This allows organizations to improve their response times and minimize the risk of losing customers due to extensive wait times.
ChatGPT can also be used for proactive customer care, analyzing customer data and behaviour and providing highly personalized advice and options to clients.
Streamlined Communication
ChatGPT’s ability to understand and replicate conversational language makes it a useful tool for natural and effective communication in various business scenarios. For instance, ChatGPT can be used for:
- Multilingual communication. By using ChatGPT, you can easily train employees from different cultures or respond to customers worldwide.
- Mail and communication management. ChatGPT can draft, sort, and even reply to routine emails. By implementing ChatGPT in your daily business operations, you can create a more organized and efficient response system.
- Internal communications and HR. ChatGPT is an excellent tool for drafting internal communications to create clear, empathetic messages that align with your company culture.
- Personalized marketing communications. ChatGPT can also be used to analyze customer data and craft highly personalized marketing emails or social media posts.
Efficiency and Productivity
Another key advantage of ChatGPT is its ability to handle enormous volumes of customer inquiries instantaneously. This allows the AI tool to free up important resources and allow company employees to focus on more difficult, revenue-generating business activities.
In addition, ChatGPT does an excellent job automating everyday routine tasks and processes, decreasing administrative workload. By integrating ChatGPT’s functionalities into your organization’s operational activities, you may be able to reduce your employee costs while significantly boosting overall productivity and, therefore, the company’s bottom line.
Identifying Cybersecurity Risks
Of course, the attractiveness of using ChatGPT doesn’t come without certain risks, ranging from data privacy concerns to threats of malicious manipulation.
Data Privacy Concerns
The very nature of how ChatGPT and similar AI tools function instantaneously poses data privacy concerns. To properly function, ChatGPT was trained by absorbing an enormous amount of data from sources like articles, books, and webpages without seeking case-by-case permissions. Because certain information can be used to identify individuals and even find their locations, this can present significant privacy risks.
What’s more, every time you share information with ChatGPT, you are continuously adding to its data, with no guarantee that this information will not end up somewhere in the public domain.
Threat of Malicious Manipulation
One of the main risks associated with using ChatGPT in business operations is its potential for manipulation. The power of persuasive language embedded directly within the tool can be maliciously exploited to spread propaganda, influence public opinion, and manipulate individuals.
Indeed, ChatGPT excels at generating naturally-sounding, persuasive language, tailoring its responses to elicit specific emotions or actions. This ability to produce compelling narratives can make it nearly impossible for users to discern between manipulative content and genuine information. ChatGPT’s conversational nature allows it to engage in discussions with users and gradually introduce false details, thereby slowly but surely altering the users’ beliefs and perceptions.
Vulnerabilities in System Security
Another major danger associated with using ChatGPT and other generative AI tools is the risk of data breaches. For instance, according to the Search Engine Journal, nearly 100,000 ChatGPT account credentials were compromised and sold on the Dark Web between June 2022 and May 2023. Consider that information sold on the dark web can be detrimental to businesses. No detail is too small to be exploited. Malicious parties will take advantage of sensitive information, including passwords, user names, and website history.
Another problem arises due to ChatGPT’s ability to store user conversations. If hackers find a way to access user accounts, they may also gain access to potentially proprietary information, confidential personal information, or sensitive business information.
Mitigating Cybersecurity Risks
The good news is that ChatGPT can still be used safely—or as safely as possible—with proper precautions. When incorporating generative AI tools into your organization’s workflow, be sure to take the following steps to safeguard your processes:
Implementing Robust Data Protection Measures
With all the data privacy issues associated with using ChatGPT, the platform is taking active steps to protect its users’ privacy. As such, ChatGPT clarifies that all conversations between a user and the AI chatbot are protected by end-to-end encryption. In addition, it outlines that strict access controls and authentication mechanisms are in place, allowing only authorized personnel to access sensitive user data.
However, to truly protect one’s privacy, the users must take matters into their own hands. This may involve avoiding sharing sensitive information, using generalized queries only, enabling encrypted communication channels, and limiting data retention within the AI platform.
Training and Awareness Programs
Without a doubt, effective protection from modern cybersecurity risks associated with using ChatGPT starts with awareness. If your organization heavily relies on ChatGPT or other similar generative AI models, all involved employees must be properly trained and educated to safely handle sensitive information and recognize cyber risks. A helpful training tool is phishing and cyber awareness training. Many IT companies (including RevNet) offer this service.
Comprehensive cybersecurity education must be provided to employees, covering the best practices for using AI tools securely. Such education may cover topics like safe online behaviour, password management, phishing awareness, and data privacy.
Continuous Monitoring and Incident Response
Finally, any organization using ChatGPT for business operations must implement monitoring and logging mechanisms to continuously track AI usage. Doing so will allow you to quickly detect any suspicious activities or potential security incidents and act accordingly.
Review AI-related cybersecurity risks relevant specifically to your line of business and develop a thorough incident response plan to follow should an event happen. The plan should outline all the necessary steps starting with investigation and ending with post-incident reporting.
Once all the controls are in place, continue to conduct regular cybersecurity audits and assessments to evaluate the effectiveness of your measures and identify areas for potential improvement.
Chat GPT and Cybersecurity: Final Thoughts
Without question, ChatGPT presents an attractive and exciting opportunity for businesses to streamline their operations, improve customer service quality, and discover new avenues for growth. Nevertheless, ChatGPT security risks are real—and shouldn’t be taken lightly. ChatGPT is not a perfectly secure system, which means caution should be taken when using it for any form of sensitive work or sharing personal information.
RevNet highly recommends adding as many cybersecurity services to your IT contract as possible. The bare minimum we recommend is endpoint detection and response software (EDR), 2FA for essential platforms, including email applications, and a managed detection and response service (MDR). The MDR works in tandem with the EDR: While the EDR reviews traffic on the computer it’s installed on, the MDR reviews traffic on the whole network.
Trust real cybersecurity professionals at RevNet for the most up-to-date protection services that adapt to changing technologies, including AI. Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we can help protect your business from ChatGPT dangers.
