BRUSSELS — The European Commission's cybersecurity division is rolling out a plan to use artificial intelligence to respond to high-risk cyberattacks, according to a document obtained by POLITICO. The undated document, written by the Commission's IT department, sets out how to prepare the EU executive’s cyber defenses for “emerging AI-driven threats.” It proposes an action plan to shore up defenses in light of AI, with the most urgent move being the speed of response to attacks. Governments have rushed to grapple with the rising threat brought by AI's ability to expose and exploit cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
Incidents like OpenAI's accidental intrusion into Hugging Face have prompted calls, including at the highest political level, to be more wary of advanced AI models. Being able to respond quickly to cyberattacks is most crucial in “high-risk scenarios,” the EU executive’s internal cyber defenders warned, saying that the ability to detect an attack is “not sufficient if containment measures cannot be taken quickly enough.” Officials at the in-house IT department, DG DIGIT, are planning to use automated “protective measures” in specific high-risk scenarios, it said. Those scenarios were redacted in the document, which was provided to POLITICO in response to a freedom of information request.
The plan does not amount to “uncontrolled automation” and there will be strict controls in place including human oversight, according to the document. As well as laying out the response plan, the document sets out the cybersecurity challenges the Commission faces from AI. The most advanced AI models are expected to “significantly increase the speed, scale and adaptability of cyberattacks” and the Commission must therefore have defenses in places for an environment where “attacks are likely to become faster, more frequent and more scalable,” it said.
Risks include situations where “malicious activity occurs outside EC [European Commission] normal working hours, spreads more rapidly across systems, or results in large-scale exfiltration or operational disruption before manual intervention can be organized by EC,” they said. The Commission's cyber division has sought approval internally to move ahead with the plans, it said, though it’s not clear whether the plans have yet been put in place. The Commission didn't respond to a request for comment.
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