BANGI: The government must adapt its approach to cybercrime as criminals increasingly use artificial intelligence (AI) to carry out more sophisticated offences, says Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail.
The Home Minister said AI was rapidly changing the nature of cybercrime, making it both a security and law enforcement challenge.
“When criminals change how they commit crime, we must change how we protect the people.
“Generative AI is perhaps the biggest change in cybersecurity and cybercrime. It works on both sides of this fight, as a threat and as a shield.
“It gives criminals new weapons, from creating convincing scam messages and deepfakes to cloning voices and carrying out thousands of scam conversations simultaneously.
“But it also gives us new defences. It can detect fraud patterns, scan millions of transactions, analyse huge volumes of digital evidence, detect deepfakes, trace stolen money and warn us of attacks.
“If criminals learn AI faster than our defenders, we will lose this fight no matter how much technology we buy,” he said at the 6th International Cyber Resilience Conference here on Wednesday (Sept 2).
Saifuddin said continuous investment in skills and human capital was essential to keep enforcement agencies abreast of rapidly evolving AI tools.
“Our prosecutors and judges must understand digital evidence. Our agencies need data scientists and analysts, not only detectives.
“But when criminals have already mastered it, we cannot remain at the old level. If we cannot surpass them, we must at least be on par,” he said.
He said the ministry’s overall readiness to embrace AI stood at 75%, based on a survey conducted by its policy division three years ago.
“Am I satisfied? Of course not, because I still see a lot of room for improvement. Are we moving in that direction, and are we ready and committed? The answer is yes.
“In enforcement, especially the police, which now leads the National Scam Response Centre (NSRC), mastering AI technology is a prerequisite,” he said.
