Valimail CEO and co-founder Garcia-Tobar (pictured) said he expects a dramatic escalation in AI-fuelled disinformation and sophisticated cyber threats next year.
He said that with disinformation spreading rapidly due to advanced AI tools, email authentication will become critical to safeguard against false narratives. The election season will likely see intensified information attacks, highlighting the need for stringent verification of digital communications.
“As cyber threats grow more sophisticated with AI advancements, robust authentication will emerge as a key defence necessary to discern real interactions from AI-generated deceptions. This evolving cyber landscape underscores the urgency of adapting security strategies to outpace these emerging challenges,” he warned.
“In 2024, disinformation will accelerate, exacerbated by ongoing global conflicts and the growing availability of AI tools to create and spread false narratives more rapidly and convincingly. This trend will be viewed against declining public trust in institutions, intensified by the US election year. With email being the primary communication tool, validating sender authentication will become increasingly more important,” Tobar said.
This will be made worse by the 2024 national election, bringing a heightened risk of targeted information attacks, especially given explicit warnings from foreign state actors about their intentions to disrupt or influence the electoral process through information warfare. With email and social networks as primary attack vectors, there will be an increased need to know the authenticity of the sender/originator of the communication, he said.
He thinks that email authentication will play a crucial role in maintaining the integrity of digital communications, especially as disinformation becomes more prevalent. Ensuring the sender’s authenticity will gain acceptance as a vital first step in building trust and accountability online. This will include transparency in content creation, where the source or authorship of information must be verifiable, reducing the potential for impersonation and misinformation.
