In recent years, the world of artificial intelligence (AI) has seen a significant increase in the use of language models. ChatGPT, a language generation model developed by OpenAI, has been making waves in the news with its ability to process large amounts of data, which can be used to train machine learning models and to test them. One feature that’s grabbed headlines is its ability to write code and provide feedback on the accuracy and efficiency of code.

Say what you want about bots, but you have to admire their versatility. Bots do everything from rank Google results and serve up cat photos on your Facebook feed, to sway elections and defraud retailers. Basically, they’re quite flexible. These days, bad bots are big business, with cybercriminals around the world using them to fraudulently access accounts, attack networks, and steal data.

If one topic has been on the minds of CISOs and CIOs alike over the last three years of Covid and post-Covid hybrid enterprise work environments, it’s ransomware. A distributed tech workforce — using distributed software services — proved to be no match for highly automated ransomware bots and malware executing encryption attacks. But this year, like the end of War of the Worlds, the attacking bots may suddenly fall silent.

Today, we’re proud to announce that Netacea is officially SOC 2 Type I compliant across four areas: security, availability, confidentiality, and privacy. This significant achievement demonstrates our commitment to keeping customer data safe and secure. While delivering the most accurate bot detection capability in the market, and protecting millions of accounts and transactions daily, Netacea processes and stores trillions of rows of customer data.

This week it was revealed that a huge credential stuffing attack had cost sports betting organization DraftKings $300,000. More specifically, cyber-crooks had used credential stuffing to gain access to many DraftKings customer accounts via a large-scale account takeover (ATO) attack and withdrawn funds. DraftKings has subsequently reimbursed the affected accounts, leaving the business out of pocket rather than its customers.

We’re looking forward to hearing Forrester’s research into bot threats over the past year, and sharing expert opinions on what businesses need to watch out for going into 2023, in an upcoming webinar. The webinar will feature Forrester Senior Analyst Janet Worthington, alongside our CPO and co-founder Andy Still and Head of Threat Research Matthew Gracey McMinn. Register now: How will bots impact your business in 2023?

Bots have been in the news a lot lately. Before committing to the Twitter takeover, Elon Musk cited huge bot numbers as a hurdle in completing the deal. Social media bots have also been blamed for interfering in elections and other political processes in recent years. Despite the current focus on bots, they’re not a new phenomenon. Bots have been around for decades — and some have caused serious damage to businesses around the world.

As cyberattacks become more prolific, the spotlight is on the cybersecurity skills shortage impacting businesses around the world. Cybersecurity staff are leaving the industry in droves, due to high stress levels and unrealistic expectations about cyberattack prevention. As a result, the cybersecurity strategy in many businesses must shift. Security should no longer fall just within the remit of select team members. Instead, everyone in the business must be responsible for keeping systems secure.

Christmas shopping season is a lucrative time of year for cybercriminals. In the UK alone, shoppers lost more than £15 million to fraud in the run-up to Christmas 2020. Of this, £2.5 million was lost over a single weekend: Black Friday to Cyber Monday. Online shopping scams are expected to ramp up ahead of Black Friday this year, too. Card cracking is particularly high risk, as heightened traffic volumes make it more difficult for many retailers to detect high volume brute force attacks.