Information warfare & cyber insecurity may impact 2024 polls globally, AI biggest threat: WEF report

Information warfare & cyber insecurity may impact 2024 polls globally, AI biggest threat: WEF report

New Delhi: Information warfare and cybersecurity threats could affect electoral campaigns and outcomes across 45 countries this year, a report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) has revealed, adding that artificial intelligence poses one of the biggest threats to the coming elections in 2024.

The report, titled ‘Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2024’ and released Thursday, was conducted in collaboration with IT company Accenture and highlighted the major challenges facing the global security landscape in 2024.

The report comes days before the WEF’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, to be held between 15 and 19 January.

As ‘cyber insecurity’ continues to be a significant concern, ranked among the top ten risks in WEF’s Global Risks Report, Thursday’s report delves into the principal trends that are influencing the worldwide cybersecurity environment. It notes that globally cyber inequity has increased dramatically, and 90 percent of executives have issued a warning that immediate action is required to address the issue.

It also highlighted how cyber inequity and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) can negatively impact markets and geopolitics adding that while “in 2022, the cybersecurity economy grew twice as fast as the world economy, in 2023, it grew four times faster”.

Increasingly concerning attacks on essential infrastructure and aspects of global supply networks, combined with economic instability, have the potential to have a macroeconomic impact, the report further states.

The report emphasised the impact of emerging technologies, including AI, on cybersecurity and also states that AI and generative AI (GenAI) represent significant dangers to elections in more than 45 nations, which account for more than half of the global GDP.

AI breakthroughs are believed to pose a higher risk than deepfakes or misinformation, according to the report.

Impact of AI on global elections in 2024

Elaborating further, it pointed out that deep fakes and sophisticated phishing attempts, as an example of the intersection of geopolitical unrest and artificial intelligence, have the potential to be weaponised to disrupt democratic elections. With the emergence of new technologies such as generative AI — a type of AI that can produce various types of text, imagery, audio, and other kinds of media using generative technology — and its widespread usage by cyber enemies, ensuring the integrity and fairness of the election process then becomes critical.

The report highlighted one such example during Slovakia’s September 2023 elections, when a deepfake audio tape was reportedly released, purportedly showing a candidate discussing election manipulation with a media representative.

A deepfake is a convincingly manipulated synthetic media.

The audio in question allegedly had Michal Šimečka, the leader of the country’s liberal Progressive Slovakia party, and  Monika Tódová, a journalist from the country’s daily, Denník N discussing how to rig the parliamentary election, then only days away.

To better comprehend the interplay between cyber and electoral security, the report highlights six areas of risk that should be identified before this year’s elections across the globe. These include organised campaigns disseminating misinformation via social media or other means that can “alter public opinion, throw doubt on election integrity, and influence election results”.

Other areas according to the report, include deepfakes, automated disinformation using AI algorithms, AI-powered microtargeting of voter misinformation or disinformation, and social media algorithm manipulation.

Highlighting concerns about data privacy, the report further states that when voting information is derived from national ID, residence records, or other means that link to personally identifiable information (PII), automated processing may allow for the leakage of personal data unrelated to voting eligibility judgments.

It also said that while generative AI will increase the complexity of assaults, it is not the only source of concern about the surge in cybercriminal behavior.

Impact of the digital divide and how it led to cyber inequality 

Pointing out the major reasons for growing cyber inequities, the report states that with time, the market became increasingly fragmented due to variations in organisational, sectoral, and country-specific conditions, alongside diverse reactions to universal cyber challenges.

“Add to the equation the pace of the rising cost of access to adequate cybersecurity capability and what results is the current state of cyber inequity between small and large organisations, between the public and private sectors, and among organisations operating in different economies around the world,” the report adds.

The digital divide in access to the internet provides a useful parallel, according to the report — it said that “although 63 percent of the world’s population is connected to the internet; (the) least developed countries still only count 27 percent of their populations as internet users”.

The growing gap between cyber-resilient businesses and those struggling has also emerged as a major danger for 2024, the report says, adding that the number of organisations that maintain minimal viable cyber resilience — the ability to anticipate, respond to, and recover from cyber threats — has declined by 30 percent compared to 2023.

While large organisations made considerable increases in cyber resilience, small and medium-sized businesses experienced significant declines, it said.

A minimum of 70 percent of executives surveyed in this year’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook indicated that geopolitics has exerted a moderate impact on the cybersecurity strategy of their respective organisations, the report said.

“Over the past five years, the number of malware families and variants that have infiltrated at least 10% of global organizations has doubled”, the report further highlighted.

Cyber inequity in organisations

The report also highlighted the progressively widening cyber inequity between organisations that possess cyber resilience and those that do not. On the contrary, the report said that there’s decline in the proportion of organisations that uphold even the bare minimum of cyber resilience.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs), despite making up the majority of many country’s ecosystems, are being disproportionately affected by this disparity, the report said.

“The number of organisations that maintain minimum viable cyber resilience is down 30 percent. While large organizations demonstrated remarkable gains in cyber resilience, SMEs showed a significant decline,” it said.

While there is an overall increase in organisational investment in cyber resilience, the pace of innovation and expansion frequently results in disparate progress, the report said.

“This unevenness creates major economic and social benefits for some;  generally, the largest and most developed economies reap the rewards of new technologies, while less developed nations, sectors and communities continue to fall behind,” the report said, adding that rapid technological advancement, while advantageous for numerous stakeholders in terms of collaboration, innovation, and access, is simultaneously cultivating systemic inequity within the worldwide cybersecurity sector.

“As the cyber realm evolves in response to emerging technologies and shifting geopolitical and economic trends, so do the challenges that threaten our digital world.  We urgently need coordinated action by key public-private stakeholders if we are to collectively address these complex, ever-evolving threats and build a secure digital future for all,” Jeremy Jurgens, WEF’s managing director said in a press release.

(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)