After several years of experimentation and pilot projects, AI in the telecoms industry is now beginning to show measurable improvements. Industry data from providers, such as Subex, indicates that billing queries can be reduced by up to 60% through better automation and error reduction. However, research conducted by MIT highlights a wider shift across the sector from early-stage innovation in labs to embedding AI solutions directly into operational IT systems.
These findings underscore a maturing landscape, where both vendors and communications service providers (CSPs) are focusing on practical deployment and demonstrating clear returns on investment.
Within this evolving context, Cerillion is providing a true product approach with AI built into the core of its BSS/OSS product suite, so CSPs can immediately benefit from the technology without needing any specific AI expertise or complex integration. This follows a “Bring Your Own” AI model, which supports all the major public large language models (LLMs), but can equally be used with private models.
In recognition of this progress, Cerillion has recently been positioned in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant™ for AI in CSP Customer and Business Operations. This new report reflects how AI capabilities are now becoming integral to core telecom operations, moving beyond pilot projects into large-scale deployments. With many CSPs looking to Gartner research when shaping their technology strategies, this acknowledgement underscores the growing importance of embedding AI within BSS/OSS platforms to deliver measurable business outcomes.
A key area of Cerillion’s solution involves GenAI-powered image recognition to support rapid product configuration. This approach allows CSP teams to sketch new product ideas on a whiteboard, upload a picture into Cerillion’s Enterprise Product Catalogue, and the configuration is built automatically. This is already proving to significantly shorten product development lifecycles, with time savings of up to 95%.
Additionally, the company’s AI-driven promotions engine is used to support faster and more precise marketing campaigns, enabling offers tailored to customer behaviour and preferences.
AI adoption in telecoms is now focused towards delivering outcomes that matter, including:
As technologies continue to advance, CSPs face increasing pressure to move beyond AI pilot projects and demonstrate tangible business value. Successful deployments are expected to integrate AI capabilities within core business support systems (BSS) and operations support systems (OSS), ensuring scalability, compliance, and smooth operation alongside existing infrastructure.
CSPs who effectively embed AI into their business processes, treating it as a foundational operational capability rather than a standalone feature, are likely to achieve faster and more sustainable benefits.
For CSPs aiming to modernise, the industry is at a turning point. Third-party benchmarks, such as those from Subex and academic studies from MIT, show a sector-wide transformation is underway. Cerillion’s ongoing innovation efforts, including AI-powered image recognition for product setup and AI-driven promotions, exemplify how emerging technologies can contribute to operational improvements and greater responsiveness to market needs.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is not long just a buzzword, but a pivotal force driving unprecedented business transformation and growth. The technology is fundamentally reshaping how businesses in Ireland operate, innovate, and compete. According to the Dell Innovation Catalyst Study, 76% of organisations based in Ireland are already considering AI and GenAI a key part of their business strategy, with 84% reporting substantial ROI and productivity gains from adopting these technologies. Moreover, 66% of Irish organisations are at early to mid-stage in their AI and GenAI adoption journey, while 90% see strong opportunities to leverage Agentic AI within their business operations. Ivor Buckley, Field CTO at Dell Technologies Ireland and Northern Ireland tells us more.
However, there are complexities involved with fully harnessing the power of GenAI. To build and train GenAI models, organisations need vast amounts of information. In turn, these same models also generate vast quantities of data to go back into the business. So, the question each business leader must ask before embracing AI and GenAI is: are our storage solutions up to the task?
The solution is scalable, secure, and economically sound data architecture that will set apart the organisations simply running in the AI race, and those leading it.
Storage solutions for the GenAI age
For GenAI to be successfully deployed, organisations must rethink, rearchitect and optimise their storage to effectively manage GenAI’s hefty data management requirements. By doing so, organisations will avoid a potential slowdown in processes due to inadequate or improperly designed storage.
The reality is that traditional storage systems are already struggling to keep pace with the explosion of data, and as GenAI systems advance and tackle new, more complex tasks the requirements will only increase. In other words, storage platforms must be aligned with the more complex realities of unstructured data, also known as qualitative data, and the emerging needs of GenAI.
In fact, unstructured data accounts for over 90% of the data created each year – largely due to a rise in human generated data, meaning the sphere is made up of cluttered and muddled columns of analysis. Enterprises need new ways to cost-effectively store data of this scale and complexity, while still providing easy and quick access to it and protecting it against cyber criminals. Unstructured data specifically is of interest to hackers, due to its value and sheer volume.
Organizations are seeking to enhance how they manage data—whether it’s moving, accessing, scaling, or safeguarding it. In the pursuit of rapid improvement, many have adopted solutions that store data across several public cloud platforms. While these public cloud environments can deliver immediate benefits, such as increased flexibility and availability, they often introduce longer-term complications.
Over time, organizations may face rising costs associated with moving data into and out of different clouds, heightened security risks, and challenges when attempting to optimize their data across these disparate environments. For generative AI to reach its full potential, it requires straightforward, reliable access to quality data; unfortunately, strategies that prioritize public cloud only adoption above all else frequently struggle to meet these requirements.
Organisations should instead look to adopt a multicloud by design approach. This will help them unlock the full potential of multicloud in the short and long-term, without being constrained by siloed ecosystems of proprietary tools and services. Multicloud by design brings management consistency to storing, protecting and securing data in multicloud environments.
Investing in new storage technologies
Businesses need new, novel approaches that cater to GenAI’s specific requirements and vast, diverse data sets. Some of these cutting-edge technologies include distributed storage, data compression and data indexing.
Distributed storage enhances the scalability and reliability of GenAI systems by housing data across multiple locations. For example, organisations can rapidly scale their storage needs across several nodes, should demand increase, as well as replicate their most critical data, allowing it to be vaulted in a separate location and easily retrieved in the event of a cyber-attack.
Another key concern facing many organisations is cost. However, this can be addressed in part through data compression. By removing unwanted data through data compression methods, organisations can reduce their storage needs. This is achieved by more effectively analysing data and removing unnecessary information to achieve a more summarised version. This in turn reduces the amount of storage required by the organisation and consequently, saves on costs.
Data Indexing on the other hand improves retrieval capabilities, and search capabilities, speeding up training and operational efficiency. Together, these technologies enhance performance, efficiency, and cost-savings.
To fully capitalise on GenAI’s potential, Irish organisations must prioritise a solid storage foundation and effective data management strategy. This will be a key focus at the upcoming Dell Technologies Forum 2025 in Dublin, where business leaders will explore the infrastructure needed to seamlessly integrate AI and GenAI into their operations. Attendees will gain practical insights from Dell experts and hear first-hand about the latest developments in AI, multi-cloud, and other innovative technologies.
It’s clear that there are vast opportunities ahead for organisations to enhance productivity and drive transformation in the AI era. To ensure your business is ready to lead, register today for the Dell Technologies Forum 2025 and discover how to turn GenAI and data into a true competitive advantage.
The Dell Technologies Forum 2025 is run in collaboration with Intel, Microsoft and NVIDIA. For more information and to register for this event, click here.
Agentic AI represents the next frontier in artificial intelligence innovation where autonomous agents work together as a team. Although agentic AI is in its early stages, it has the potential to help enterprises achieve remarkable gains in productivity, efficiency, and scalability by eliminating inefficiencies and seamlessly scaling an organization’s collective skills. With AI agents, enterprises can gain a competitive advantage by delivering insights faster and making strategic decisions more effectively.
Neil Bowden, Director of Data Analytics & AI, Dell Technologies Ireland tells us more below
AI lessens the burden of using complex tools and dissolves siloes by augmenting human capabilities. Now, employees can contribute more meaningfully to specialized tasks with the assistance of AI. Teams working with AI are three times more likely to be in the top decile of performance than individuals working with AI or teams working without AI.
Defining Agentic AI
An AI agent is a software system that uses artificial intelligence to autonomously make decisions and take actions to achieve a set of objectives. AI agents have the power to reason, learn and adapt based on their perception of the work environment. As a result, they can be given a goal and carry out complex tasks to reach that goal, with minimal or potentially no human interaction.
AI agents surpass automation by adapting and learning within complex workflows. To tap into the potential of agentic AI, it’s important to understand the difference between automation and autonomy. Automation is a predefined set of actions that are performed by a piece of technology, whereas autonomy is an intent that is given to technology and the technology then determines and performs the task. Autonomy happens when the human ceases to be the “doer” of the work or ceases to define the workflow.
Take supply chain management as an example. An automated robot can be designed to pick, pack and ship goods in a productive manner that reduces errors, achieving faster order completion and customer satisfaction. An autonomous agent, or AI agent, can optimize supply chain management by predicting demand, managing inventory levels, and coordinating with suppliers to ensure timely restocking. It could identify potential disruptions and suggest solutions to maintain the smooth flow of goods.
Generative AI vs. Agentic AI – Understanding Their Unique Roles
AI agents are different from GenAI chatbots and assistants. GenAI chatbots and assistants help us unlock the power of data, so we can more effectively interact with and act on it. In contrast, AI agents interact with the data and act on our behalf based on our desired goals and without our intervention.
An AI agent is typically composed of a core (i.e., a persona, goals, and a list of available tools); a memory; tools to perceive and interact with its environment; and some form of reasoning function that is likely based on an AI model (e.g., LLM). The capabilities of these building blocks determine the AI agent’s reasoning ability and influence its degree of autonomy.
Balancing Autonomy and Oversight for Effective AI Integration
Humans are critical to agentic AI because they provide intentionality for AI agents. Despite the autonomous nature of AI agents, there is still a human involved in defining what success looks like to the AI agents. The biggest shift from GenAI chatbots and assistants to AI agents is that humans are in the loop with GenAI tools. This means humans are deeply involved in defining how work is going to be done.
With the current slate of AI agents, humans are on the loop. This means that you define the outcome and the intent, but you have delegated the AI agent to figure out how to perform the task. AI agents will become one of the most impactful tools that accelerate enterprise efficiency by taking on complex tasks while continuously improving themselves through learning and adaptation.
These questions of oversight, governance, and the evolving relationship between humans and AI are not just theoretical, they are at the heart of the conversations we’ll be having at the Dell Technologies Forum in Dublin on September 23rd. From exploring how Irish businesses can build trustworthy, autonomous AI systems to examining next-generation AI infrastructure, to understanding how GenAI and Agentic AI work in tandem. This year’s Forum will bring these concepts to life with real-world examples and the insights of Dell experts.
Practical Applications of Agentic AI
AI agents are autonomous and function-serving, which means they are capable of interfacing with other systems and taking actions in those systems. However, the first generation of AI agents are captive within a particular product, system, or vendor. As the technology advances and interoperability standards are defined, it can be leveraged across software programs and across business units from sales to finance, marketing to HR, and in the supply chain.
To prepare for agentic AI, enterprises should look at their technology infrastructure foundation and ensure it is equipped to power and scale AI agents. Identify priority use cases to plug AI agents and start thinking about how to integrate them into your workflows across enterprise software systems and other IT operations.
At this year’s Forum, speakers will provide practical advice for decision makers that can help their organisation overcome infrastructure challenges, unlock productivity, and prepare their workforce for new roles in an AI-driven environment. Sessions will dive into how IT leaders can balance innovation with security, compliance, and ethical considerations while scaling AI initiatives.
The Potential Impact of Agentic AI
Before we know it, AI agents will become the new Application Programming Interface (API) of business, enhancing the way enterprises operate regardless of industry. The real value of AI agents is not when they are in isolation, but rather when they start to work together. This could be an ensemble of agents working inside your company (e.g., different AI agents with different frameworks), or the next evolution: when your AI agents can interact with someone else’s AI agents. With interoperability standards soon to be defined, it won’t be hard to imagine your AI agents interworking with the AI agents of vendors, partners, and customers. The possibilities are endless.
I’m excited for what the future holds for agentic AI and how it will propel enterprises into the future. Dell Technologies Forum will be an important forum for these discussions, bringing together Ireland’s business community to explore agentic AI and its impact on business transformation, leadership, and competitiveness in the AI era.
Join them at the Royal Dublin Society in Dublin on September 23rd for the 2025 Dell Technologies Forum, run in collaboration with NVIDIA, Intel, and Microsoft. For more information and to register for this event, click here
Ireland’s startup ecosystem is setting the pace for AI adoption in Europe, according to a new AWS report titled “Unlocking Ireland’s AI Potential 2025”. The report, based on survey data of 1,000 Irish businesses, highlights how agile Irish startups are rapidly integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into their core operations, with 36% of Irish startups embedding AI at the core of their business model, higher than the 29% European average.
Irish startups are also seeing measurable gains from this adoption, with 94% of Irish businesses reporting a significant increase in revenue thanks to adopting AI, with an average 36% revenue increase directly linked to their use of AI.
“The data in this report aligns closely with our observations in the field – Irish startups are demonstrating a strong commitment to integrating emerging technologies,” said Niamh Gallagher, AWS Country Lead for Ireland. “Many of these companies clearly recognise that AI is becoming increasingly important for maintaining competitiveness, attracting investment, and pursuing global expansion opportunities.”
During the AWS Gen AI Loft Dublin tour, Niamh Gallagher met with Niamh Smyth, Minister for the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment with special responsibility for Trade Promotion, Artificial Intelligence and Digital Transformation. The Minister was presented the “Unlocking Ireland’s AI Potential 2025” report and taken through the key findings. During the event, leading Irish startup founders shared how AI is already transforming their industries.
Minister Smyth, praising the role of startups in Ireland’s AI leadership, said “These findings make it clear that startups are central to Ireland’s digital future,” she said. “They’re leveraging AI not only to grow, but to lead the transformation of entire industries—from safety tech to genomics and climate solutions.”
“This report validates our approach to keeping children safe online,” said Rena Maycock, founder of Chirp, a safety-focused tech company. “Using GenAI to enhance our datasets has enabled us to detect and block harmful communications and offer real-time protection for children and families—something that simply wouldn’t be possible with conventional tech alone.”
“At Jentic, we’re building AI-native infrastructure for the agent era, enabling AI agents to dynamically discover, load, and execute the exact tools they need, precisely when they need them,” said Dorothy Creaven, Chief Operating Officer of Jentic.“This report reinforces what we’re seeing every day: Ireland’s startups are not just adopting AI, they’re pushing the boundaries of how AI is applied at scale.”
“The report reflects what we’re seeing on the ground,” added Sean Mullaney, Founder & CEO of Seapoint. “AI isn’t just enhancing finance tools—it’s fundamentally changing how startups manage money, make strategic decisions, and scale. It’s enabling us to build the intelligent financial home we always wished we had.”
Across Ireland, businesses are integrating AI at an accelerating pace, with 45% now using AI, marking a 32% growth in just one year, up from 34% last year. This growth is outpacing the European average, where, overall, 42% of businesses are now consistently using AI at a growth rate of 27%.
The report also found that Irish businesses reported a 25% year-on-year increase in AI investment, exceeding the European average of 22%.
Wide, but shallow adoption: The two-tier economy
Many businesses, particularly large enterprises, are not leveraging the most advanced uses of AI. This risks a two-tier AI economy between startups and large enterprises. The research identifies three distinct stages of AI adoption in Ireland, outlining the gap between businesses that are merely experimenting with AI and those that are fully embedding it into their operations for transformative impact.
Stage 1: First steps
Two thirds (66%) of Irish businesses are in the early stages of AI adoption, primarily using publicly available chatbots or basic AI tools for routine tasks (e.g., chatbots, scheduling assistants)
Large enterprises are slow to progress beyond basic AI applications with 83% remaining at the most basic stage of AI integration
Stage 2: Transformation
The divide between startups and large enterprises becomes pronounced at this stage. Startups continue to set the standard on AI integration—25% are currently at this stage and exploring how they can integrate AI more deeply within their organisations, more than triple that of large businesses (7%).
Stage 3: Strategic Innovation
A small proportion of businesses are at this stage and are using AI not just to improve efficiencies, but also as a fundamental pillar of their strategy. 26% of startups have reached stage 3, integrating AI across operations, compared to only 8% of large businesses.
(17%) of businesses at this stage are building custom AI systems or apps tailored to their specific needs, and additionally, 17% of businesses report full AI integration, where AI is seamlessly embedded across operations.
“This report highlights the remarkable pace of innovation in today’s startup ecosystem,” said Tricia Troth, General Manager, Startups UK & Ireland at AWS. “We’re seeing startups move beyond AI experimentation to implement practical, strategic applications. The data shows how founders are increasingly focused on integrating AI into their long-term growth and scaling strategies.”
Advise, the automated data, analytics and AI platform provider helping retail manufacturers and brand-owners to unlock revenues and margin growth, today launches a new GenAI-powered agent. The expert GenAI assistant has been trained by Advise engineers to enhance customer decision-making, giving them competitive advantage. It represents an €8M investment by the Dublin-based company in the development of its AI platform.
Advise’s GenAI agent is a major update to the company’s AI-powered SaaS platform and can help brands to reach actionable insights 10X faster than previous methods. The platform collates and harmonises sales, inventory and customer data from multiple sources into a single platform. The Advise analytics engine filters out data noise, identifies key patterns and presents the most critical information in real-time. The customised GenAI agent further enhances this process by translating complex analytics into clear, natural language explanations and recommendations, turning statistical outputs into human-digestible insights.
The latest release was created by Advise’s Dublin-based engineering team, using a customised and trained large language model (LLM). While more widely available LLMs are typically limited to chatbot-style interactions, Advise’s agent moves beyond this. The GenAI agent has been trained to augment the role of the category manager – the expert responsible for understanding product performance and optimising new product, pricing and promotion strategies. In doing so, the platform empowers consumer-packaged goods (CPG) brands such as Kerry, Dr. Oetker, Pilgrim Food Masters, Tayto and Britvic, to take decisive action that will result in revenue growth.
Advise has programmed the customised GenAI agent to work from a structured set of instructions and best practices. With the ability to personalise its output according to each customer, it can detect market shifts, anticipate trends and deliver guided and relevant insights tailored to business needs. The agent also ranks, through a News Feed on the Advise platform, its insights based on relevance and urgency, ensuring users receive tailored, high-value recommendations on their next steps.
Kevin McCarthy, CEO, Advise, said:“Many businesses are still focusing on data collection and analytics, but we have moved beyond that. We have automated data processing and evolved GenAI to augment and act as a valuable assistant to category managers; turning data into insights and decisive actions that drive margin growth and competitive advantage.
“At Advise, we believe that the future of category management isn’t just about gathering more data; it’s about making smarter decisions, faster. Our new GenAI agent doesn’t just analyse; it anticipates. It learns, adapts, and prioritises what matters most for each brand, providing tailored recommendations that translates directly into growth. It enables users to move beyond spreadsheets and dashboards to proactive decision-making.”
LLMs are hugely powerful and are impacting every industry, but their output is non-deterministic and they suffer from creative hallucinations. This can make them unsuitable for numeric and statistical analysis unless carefully managed. What we have created is the next generation of CPG decision-making: where you don’t just gain trustworthy information, but a strategic advantage using GenAI. In a world where speed and precision define success, this is how the best brands will stay ahead.”
Legal Island, one of Ireland’s top compliance specialists, has issued a stark warning to employers: your staff could be feeding confidential business data straight into the public domain; and you, or in fact they, probably don’t even know it.
Before using ChatGPT, users can disable its training mode, a setting that, when left on, allows OpenAI to store and use input data to refine future responses. It became apparent to Legal Island that many employers are allowing the use of ChatGPT without any proper training, and without making their employees aware of the importance of turning off the training function before using the tool.
A new survey of 100+ organisations, conducted by Legal Island, found that just 4% of users knew how to disable ChatGPT’s training function, the simple privacy toggle that prevents OpenAI from reusing sensitive data.
Barry Phillips, Chairman of Legal Island and author of a new book, ‘ChatGPT in HR’, put it bluntly: “When the training feature is left switched on, OpenAI can capture the information entered into ChatGPT and recycle it to improve future outputs. If your staff are using ChatGPT with the training function left on, you’re potentially leaking commercially sensitive data into a giant AI engine. That data could pop up in someone else’s prompt next week. It’s a legal, reputational, and regulatory mess waiting to happen.”
Phillips continued: “While it’s encouraging that employees are embracing ChatGPT and teaching themselves how to use it, the lack of formal training is alarming. Our research shows a worrying knowledge gap as most employees in Ireland don’t even know the tool has a training function, let alone how to disable it.”
To address this compliance crisis, Legal Island has developed a free 10-minute e-learning module for employees, showing them exactly how to use ChatGPT safely, including how to switch off the training function before entering any data.
Kellie Shields, Chief Compliance Officer at Legal Island, added: “People treat GenAI like a harmless toy, it’s anything but. Without proper training, it’s a data breach in the making. This issue is too important to ignore, so we’re encouraging employers to take action today and avail of the free compliance training.”
Legal Island has been guiding HR professionals through the complexities of workplace compliance since 1998. With offices in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, the award-winning organisation has become a trusted voice on the safe adoption of emerging tech in the workplace.
Surveying 1,000 people in Ireland, the Deloitte Digital Consumer Trends report shows that over two thirds (67%) of GenAI users say it boosts their productivity at work, but less than one in four (24%) say their employer actively encourages use of the technology.
The research shows that 90% of Irish companies lack a GenAI policy and that while GenAI users are more likely to use the technology for personal reasons (69%), the percentage using it for work tasks is up from 32% in 2023 to 36%.
A total of 48% of respondents have used GenAI, an increase from 33% in 2023. Meanwhile, the percentage of those who are not aware of GenAI is down from 38% in 2023 to 27%.
Of those using GenAI, 10% are using it daily, 28% are doing so weekly and 15% are using it monthly. A total of 46% are using it less than monthly, with 24% of this cohort saying they don’t know how to use it well and 18% saying they are dissatisfied with the answers they receive.
Use of GenAI is highest among younger people at 85% for those aged 18 to 24, followed by 69% for the 25 to 34 age group and 56% for those aged 35 to 44. Usage then drops significantly to 34% for those aged 45 to 54, 22% for those between 55 and 64 and 20% for those aged 65 to 75.
Most people use GenAI for personal reasons (69%) ahead of professional or work reasons (36%) and for educational purposes (38%).
Of the 67% of users who believe GenAI makes them more productive at work, 44% say they use the technology for writing and editing emails and for looking up information. A total of 42% use it to generate ideas, followed by creating written content (38%), summarising texts and reports (35%), editing (26%), analysing data (25%) and generating images (20%).
When GenAI users were asked if their employer encouraged them to use the technology at work, just 8% strongly agreed with the statement and 16% agreed.
The survey showed that uncertainty around GenAI and its impact on future workforces continues to be a concern with 60% of users worried that it will reduce the number of jobs available in the future and 46% concerned that it will replace some of their role in the workforce.
While they are concerned about the potential impact of GenAI on their future, a significant proportion of users trust the technology. A total of 28% of users said GenAI responses were unbiased and 34% agreed that the technology “always produces accurate responses”. This is despite well-documented issues with the reliability of the technology.
The survey also showed that a majority of those who are aware of GenAI would be less inclined to trust AI-generated emails (66%) and AI-delivered customer services (63%).
Meanwhile, ChatGPT remains the most popular GenAI tool among people in Ireland having been used by 49% of GenAI users. This is far ahead of similar products such as Snapchat’s ‘My AI’ (15%), Microsoft Copilot (13%) and Google Gemini (12%). The survey took place prior to the release of DeepSeek’s latest AI model.
Emmanuel Adeleke, Deloitte Ireland’s GenAI Leader, said: “Employees in Ireland are racing ahead of their employers when it comes to GenAI. This means gains are being left on the table by employers and innovation is being stymied. We’re seeing the wide range of benefits GenAI creates for our clients in Deloitte, such as improved efficiency and productivity, but our survey shows that the vast majority of organisations do not have GenAI policies in place and they are not actively promoting its use or leading on its adoption even though their employees are increasingly using it to complete everyday tasks.
“It is vital employers take the lead on the use of GenAI. They need to invest in initiatives and organisational changes that will drive adoption of GenAI tools and identify successful use cases for their organisations.
“There is a risk in not reacting to the increase in usage, particularly because users are not fully appreciative of the dangers involved as indicated by the level of trust certain users have in GenAI tools, despite well-documented reliability issues. If employers invest properly in GenAI and integrate it correctly, they will uncover the challenges involved and the tremendous potential of this technology.”
He added: “Our survey found that some users are willing to experiment with GenAI, but they are lacking confidence when it comes to knowing how to use it and ultimately find the experience to be unsatisfactory. Organisations can address this through training and support, ensuring employees can use GenAI to meet their needs and transition into more frequent and more confident users. Employers should also consider a tailored approach for GenAI in the workplace that can address the differences in usage among age groups. They can enhance workplace AI tools to boost professional usage, and address age disparities by ensuring that resources and training are accessible to all and building a comprehensive change management strategy to increase the adoption and impact of GenAI tools.”
HP Inc. today issued its latest Threat Insights Report, highlighting how threat actors are using malware kits and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to improve the efficiency of their attacks. Such tools are reducing the time and skill needed to create attack components, enabling attackers to focus onexperimenting with techniques to bypass detection and trick victims into infecting their endpoints, such asembedding malicious code inside images.
The report provides an analysis of real-world cyberattacks, helping organisations to keep up with the latest techniques cybercriminals are using to evade detection and breach PCs in the fast-changing cybercrime landscape. Based on data from millions of endpoints running HP Wolf Security, notable campaigns identified by HP threat researchers include:
Malware-by-numbers kits: HP threat researchers observed large campaigns spreading VIP Keylogger and 0bj3ctivityStealer malware that leverage the same techniques and loaders, suggesting the use of malware kits to deliver different payloads. In both campaigns, attackers hid the same malicious code in images on file hosting websites like archive.org, as well as using the same loader to install the final payload. Such techniques help attackers circumvent detection, as image files appear benign when downloaded from well-known websites, bypassing network security like web proxies that rely on reputation.
GenAI helping to create malicious HTML documents: Researchers also identified an XWorm remote access trojan (RAT) campaign initiated by HTML smuggling, which contained malicious code that downloads and runs the malware. Notably, similar to an AsyncRAT campaign analysed in the previous quarter, the loader bore hallmarks that indicate that it may have been written with the help of GenAI, for example, including a line-by-line description and the design of the HTML page.
Gaming cheaters never prosper: Attackers are compromising video game cheat tools and modification repositories hosted on GitHub, adding executable files containing Lumma Stealer malware. This infostealer scrapes victims’ passwords, crypto wallets, and browser information. Users frequently deactivate security toolsto download and use cheats, putting them at greater risk of infection without isolation technology in place.
Alex Holland, Principal Threat Researcher in the HP Security Lab, comments:
“The campaigns analyzed provide further evidence of the commodification of cybercrime. As malware-by-numbers kits are more freely available, affordable, and easy to use, even novices with limited skills and knowledge can put together an effective infection chain. Throw GenAI into the mix to write the scripts, and the barriers to entry get even lower. This allows groups to concentrate on tricking their targets and picking the best payload for the job – for instance by targeting gamers with malicious cheat repositories.”
By isolating threats that have evaded detection tools on PCs – but still allowing malware to detonate safely – HP Wolf security has specific insight into the latest techniques used by cybercriminals. To date, HP Wolf Security customers have clicked on over 65 billion email attachments, web pages, and downloaded files with no reported breaches.
The report, which examines data from calendar Q3 2024, details how cybercriminals continue to diversify attack methods to bypass security tools that rely on detection, such as:
At least 11% of email threats identified by HP Sure Click bypassed one or more email gateway scanners.
Executables were the most popular malware delivery type (40%), followed by archive files (34%).
There was a notable rise in .lzh files, which made up 11% of archive files analysed – with most malicious .lzh archive files targeting Japanese-speaking users.
Neil Dover, country manager for Ireland at HP Inc., comments:
“Cybercriminals are rapidly increasing the variety, volume, and velocity of their attacks. If a malicious Excel document is blocked, an archive file in the next attack may slip through the net. Instead of trying to detect rapidly shifting infection methods, organisations should focus on reducing their attack surface. This means isolating and containing risky activities such as opening email attachments, clicking on links, and browser downloads to reduce the chances of a breach.”
HP Wolf Security runs risky tasks in isolated, hardware-enforced virtual machines running on the endpoint to protect users, without impacting their productivity. It also captures detailed traces of attempted infections. HP’s application isolation technology mitigates threats that can slip past other security tools and provides unique insights into intrusion techniques and threat actor behaviour.
ChatGPT is a more popular and widely used generative AI (GenAI) tool in Ireland than in the UK, a recent study of senior key decision makers in the UK & Ireland has revealed.
The study, conducted earlier this year by Coleman Parkes Research Ltd. and commissioned by SAS, surveyed 200 UK & Ireland GenAI strategy and data analytics decision-makers to pulse check major areas of investment and the hurdles organisations are facing around the technology.
It asked questions about organisations’ current plans to deploy GenAI, how the technology is integrated into their strategic planning, and what challenges they are facing. Find out more by reading the report entitled Generative AI Challenges and Potential Unveiled: How to Achieve a Competitive Advantage.
The research found that ChatGPT is by far the most popular GenAI tool in Ireland, with 29% of those who use GenAI in their professional lives saying it is the tool they used most often in the workplace. Meanwhile, other tools, such as DALL-E 2 and Jasper, were only used by 4% of respondents.
ChatGPT was also the most used tool in the UK, with 10% of respondents saying they use it in the workplace. However, Google AI was not far behind, with 8% of respondents selecting it as their preferred tool.
Proprietary/closed source large language model (LLM) was found to be the most common approach to adopting LLMs in Ireland, with 27% of organisations having already done so. However, this was the least common approach in the UK, with only 11% having adopted this approach.
Instead, open source LLM is the most popular option in the UK, with 33% having already adopted this approach, compared to 24% in Ireland.
The study found that more organisations in Ireland are fully prepared to integrate GenAI (11%) than in the UK (7%), but data privacy is the greatest concern in both regions, with three-quarters of organisations in Ireland ranking it as their top worry.
Meanwhile, the biggest challenge in implementing effective governance and monitoring for GenAI is technological limitations in both the UK & Ireland, with 45% of organisations in Ireland ranking it as their top challenge, compared to 28% in the UK.
Despite this, 58% of organisations in Ireland plan to introduce GenAI over the next three years, with 31% of them aiming to do this within the next year. Adoption is expected across many departments, with marketing, sales, IT and finance the most common – a clear majority (75% and above) are either using or planning to use GenAI in these areas.
Customer engagement and personalisation is seen to be the greatest potential benefit of adopting GenAI, with over three-quarters of Irish organisations saying they believe improvements will be made to their organisation in this area.
However, UK organisations are less enthusiastic about the benefits of GenAI. Just over half (56%) believe that customer engagement and personalisation will be improved, while 50% think it will improve the accuracy of predictive analytics. For Ireland these percentages are 77% and 64% respectively.
Speaking on the findings, Jean De Villiers, Head of Analytics at SAS Ireland, said: “There are promising signs of innovation in Ireland, with more organisations saying they are fully prepared to integrate GenAI than in the UK. Our research shows senior key decision-makers in Ireland recognise the many benefits of GenAI, and are aware of the improvements that it can make to customer engagement, predictive analytics, and competitive edge.
“It would appear to be just a matter of time before more organisations in Ireland implement it, with over half planning to do so in the next three years. First, they must tackle the challenges that they are encountering, such as technological limitations, which are being seen more widely in Ireland than in the UK. We are looking forward to supporting our customers through their journey towards trustworthy AI and GenAI adoption, and assisting them in using our technology to achieve the positive outcomes they seek.”
The SAS study sets out a number of recommendations that organisations should follow to successfully deploy GenAI, including the four steps below:
Strategic deployment
Comprehensive governance
Technological integration
Expert guidance
SAS’ global report on GenAI adoption has also been published, which provides further guidance around best practices and strategic insights aimed at empowering businesses to harness the technology’s full potential, along with comparisons across key markets and industry sectors.
Find out more by reading the full global report here.
