RELEX Solutions enhances workforce productivity with RELEX-GPT

MANILA, PHILIPPINES - RELEX Solutions, a leader in supply chain and retail optimization solutions, has developed a new AI tool, RELEX-GPT, leveraging the same AI models as ChatGPT, but in a secure enterprise setting, and with access to RELEX’s rich proprietary knowledge base. This initiative underscores RELEX Solutions’ commitment to harnessing innovation for efficiency.

RELEX-GPT serves as a knowledge hub streamlining access to information about RELEX products and facilitating more efficient workflows across teams. In addition to immediately retrieving and summarizing information, the tool clarifies concepts and answers complex questions. It is an invaluable asset for idea generation and research, catalyzing innovative problem-solving by aggregating relevant data.

"Our early adopters have witnessed increased productivity, a reduction in mundane tasks, and the ability to focus on more meaningful and strategic work," says Tommi Vilkamo, Director of RELEX Labs at RELEX Solutions.  "We are committed to empowering not only RELEX employees but also our customers and partners with these new superpowers and greater job satisfaction through the adoption of RELEX-GPT.”

The initial impact of adopting AI tools such as ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, and RELEX-GPT at RELEX has been profound.  An internal survey predicts average productivity gains of 40%, reaching up to 100% for specific roles. The applications of these AI tools are wide-ranging: they contribute to software development by generating code, managing tests, and resolving errors; assists in document creation and editing; and enhances cross-cultural communication through translations and language refinement for emails and presentations.

RELEX Solutions recently released the tool to their online user community as an experimental beta. The tool will naturally enhance the online community’s offerings for solution users, allowing them to easily ask questions and immediately receive answers, and share and discuss best practices related to RELEX products. Looking ahead, as user community feedback becomes available, RELEX intends to seamlessly incorporate RELEX-GPT into the RELEX Solutions product ecosystem, further enhancing the user experience.

While many companies are hesitant to adopt AI technology within their organizations, RELEX Solutions stands out by embracing this cutting-edge technology and empowering their teams to become early adopters. By staying ahead of the curve, RELEX Solutions is driving innovation and enabling their workforce to leverage the transformative capabilities of RELEX-GPT and other AI tools.

Terhi Rekilä,  Senior Legal Counsel & Governance and Regulatory Risk Manager at RELEX Solutions, emphasizes the company's commitment to risk mitigation and comprehensive evaluation of AI technologies. 

"Whenever you look at opportunities and risks, you should look at the whole picture," says Rekilä. "We aimed to establish controls and balances to mitigate the risks by evaluating each AI tool from security, privacy, and legal perspectives. This way, it's possible to reap the benefits of AI, avoid the business risks such as getting left behind by early-adopters, and mitigate potential threats. It's not risk-free to use AI, but no business is risk-free.”

Camillo Särs, CISO at RELEX Solutions, further elaborates on the company's approach to AI risks. "AI tools present a big opportunity to increase productivity as we’ve already seen with our customers and now internally through the use of RELEX-GPT. We proactively considered different risks related to AI use and co-created an AI usage policy to help our AI pilot project along. This allows us to gain the benefits of AI without taking unnecessary risks."

He adds, "We thoroughly analyzed all the risks together with our legal, privacy, and infosec teams. The conclusion was loud and clear: the benefits far outweigh the risks."

Through RELEX-GPT, RELEX Solutions affirms their position at the forefront of innovation, catalyzing transformational changes in the retail and consumer goods industries and shaping the future of supply chain optimization solutions. RELEX has embraced AI and machine learning technologies in their product portfolio since the start in 2005. With an unwavering commitment to innovation, RELEX continues to shape the industry’s future, empowering their teams and customers to stay ahead in a constantly evolving marketplace. 

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About RELEX Solutions

RELEX Solutions helps retailers and consumer brands drive profitable growth across all sales and distribution channels by maximizing customer satisfaction and minimizing operative costs. Our market-leading, unified supply chain and retail planning platform helps retailers and consumer goods companies align and optimize demand, merchandise, supply chain, and operations planning across the end-to-end value chain. We drive record-high product availability, increased sales, improved sustainability, and the best return on investment in inventory, space, workforce, and capacity. Leading brands like Dollar Tree and Family Dollar, Rite Aid, Ahold Delhaize, AutoZone, and PetSmart trust RELEX to optimize their supply chain and retail planning. Go to relexsolutions.com to learn more.

World Social Media Day: How Threat Actors are Weaponizing Social Media, from Phishing to AI-Powered Deepfakes

The Philippines is one of the most active social media communities worldwide, according to the Digital 2023 report. With 72.5% of the population on social media, Filipinos spend an average of 3 hours and 43 minutes on these channels to keep in touch with family and friends, read news stories, and find content.  As social media continues to exert its influence on everyday lives, it becomes increasingly crucial for Filipinos to remain vigilant regarding the evolving dangers associated with its usage. Recent technological advancements, particularly in the realm of artificial intelligence, have further exacerbated these risks, necessitating heightened awareness and precautionary measures.

With World Social Media Day around the corner, here are three ways social media is putting individuals and organizations at risk.

Social media preys on psychological weakness
Hackers consistently rely on user behavior to provide the openings they need to penetrate network defenses. While some look to exploit unpatched vulnerabilities in a system or network, often the most efficient way to target a business is through social engineering methods that manipulate users into breaching security policies and giving away information that can be used to steal data or launch an attack. 

According to Palo Alto Networks Unit 42’s 2022 Incident Response Report, attackers used phishing, a form of social engineering, 40% of the time to gain initial access to a system. By studying an employee’s social media profile, cybercriminals are able to develop a comprehensive profile of their victim, which they can then use to launch a targeted attack. These attacks appeal to emotions such as fear, curiosity, urgency, and greed and beckon unsuspecting employees to click on a link or attachment, ignoring basic cybersecurity hygiene. And with the Unit 42 Network Threat Trends Research Report finding that 66% of malware is delivered through PDFs, just one erroneous click of the button can lead to disastrous consequences, enabling malicious macros to infiltrate the system.

From catfishing to AI-cultivated deepfakes

Another risk associated with social media is that it involves people establishing connections without necessarily needing to establish authenticity. This requires a leap of faith, which can easily be exploited by threat actors. From identity theft to catfishing, cybercriminals use social media to capture information and content from unsuspecting victims, assume their identities, and commit fraudulent activity. 

But the breadth of ways impersonations or fake identities are being used in the security space is growing. As technological advancements improve the quality, customisability, and accessibility of artificial intelligence-enabled content creation, malicious actors are using this technology to exploit images and videos—often taken from social media platforms—and manipulate them into content that can be used for extortion, harassment, misinformation, and reputational damage. 

When disseminated through social media, convincing fake content—deepfakes—can instantly reach millions. A video altered to make it appear as if a CEO was announcing that profits were down could impact a company’s stock price; similarly, a presidential candidate appearing to confess complicity in a crime could lead to the disruption of an election. Although impersonators don’t necessarily need to be using techniques as advanced as deepfakes to cause havoc, such as the case of a fake account for a US pharma company announced it would be distributing free insulin, causing the company’s stock to plummet.

Malware and ransomware infiltrate the social web

Alongside using social media for intelligence gathering and dissemination, cybercriminals also share malicious links on social media directly. These links, harboring anything from viruses, trojans, spyware, and ransomware, help hackers access devices and networks to steal data and take control of systems. 

Of these formats, ransomware is seeing alarming growth. Philippine organizations were found by Unit 42’s Ransomware and Extortion Report to be severely affected by ransomware, with attacks surging to around 60% in 2022.

As public interest in generative AI grows, malicious actors also use this to their advantage, with ChatGPT-themed lures increasingly being used to spread malware across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Earlier this year, Meta’s security teams uncovered 10 malware families using ChatGPT (and similar themes) to deliver malicious software to users’ devices. In one instance, cybercriminals created malicious browser extensions available in official web stores that claim to offer ChatGPT-based tools, which were then promoted on social media and through sponsored search results to trick people into downloading malware. 

Tackling social media-powered cybercrime 

The above are just a few tools among a wide-ranging toolkit that cybercriminals are using to weaponize social media. And with the number of social media users worldwide predicted to grow to close to 6 billion by 2027, the risk that these platforms pose is unlikely to go away.

So what can organizations do to protect their employees? First and foremost, embedding cybersecurity education within the workplace curriculum and regularly testing the effectiveness of that training is crucial. Many companies incorporate measures like rewarding employees that spot phishing attempts and report them to the security operations team, and they see the value these practices can have for promoting cybersafety. 

On a company level, organizations should prioritize embedding a safety-first culture with a plan in place to manage the inevitability of a cyber incident. Business leaders should constantly be identifying, measuring, and evaluating risks and, where possible, limit access to sensitive information to need-to-know employees. Alongside building a robust defense plan, organizations should also establish a social media policy that sets standards around the organization’s online interactions, imposes consequences for misuse of social media, and mandates cyber awareness training for those directly involved with content publishing. 

Sean Duca, Vice President and Regional Chief Security Officer, Japan & Asia Pacific, said, “Ultimately, everyone has the right to feel safe online. And with the threat of a cyberattack ever-present in our personal and professional spaces, education is key to ensuring our digital identities and our business assets remain protected.”

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About Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks is the world’s cybersecurity leader. We innovate to outpace cyber threats, so organisations can embrace technology with confidence. We provide next-gen cybersecurity to thousands of customers globally, across all sectors. Our best-in-class cybersecurity platforms and services are backed by industry-leading threat intelligence and strengthened by state-of-the-art automation. Whether deploying our products to enable the Zero Trust Enterprise, responding to a security incident, or partnering to deliver better security outcomes through a world-class partner ecosystem, we’re committed to helping ensure each day is safer than the one before. It’s what makes us the cybersecurity partner of choice.

At Palo Alto Networks, we’re committed to bringing together the very best people in service of our mission, so we’re also proud to be the cybersecurity workplace of choice, recognized among Newsweek’s Most Loved Workplaces (2021), Comparably Best Companies for Diversity (2021), and HRC Best Places for LGBTQ Equality (2022). For more information, visit www.paloaltonetworks.com.

Palo Alto Networks, Cortex, Unit 42, and the Palo Alto Networks logo are registered trademarks of Palo Alto Networks, Inc. in the United States and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other trademarks, trade names, or service marks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners. Any unreleased services or features (and any services or features not generally available to customers) referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available (or are not yet generally available to customers) and may not be delivered when expected or at all. Customers who purchase Palo Alto Networks applications should make their purchase decisions based on services and features currently generally available.

ChatGPT: Can it help AI-led Cyberattacks?

MANILA, PHILIPPINES—Science, technology and all its components have strongly benefited the human race over generations. By definition, it is the search for new knowledge to improve the quality of life.  However, everything has the potential of being good or bad depending on the people who are behind it.

The relentless quest to mimic and decipher the human mind has ushered an era of Artificial Intelligence. ChatGPT, a text-based artificial intelligence (AI) bot has made headlines for its use of advanced AI. From accurately fixing a coding bug, generating cooking recipes, creating 3D animations, to composing entire songs, ChatGPT has showcased the mindblowing power of AI to unlock a world of incredible new possibilities and new risks.

Since its launch on November 2022, tech experts and commentators worldwide have been concerned about the impact AI-generated content tools will have on cybersecurity. 

In the recent Black Hat and Defcon security conferences, a demonstration of hacking humans with AI-as-a-service revealed howAI can actually craft better phishing emails and devilishly effective spear phishing messages than people.

Researchers using OpenAI's GPT-3 platform in combination with other AI-as-a-service products focused on personality analysis generated phishing emails that were generated customised using their colleagues' backgrounds and characters. Eventually, the researchers developed a pipeline that refined the emails before hitting their targets. To their surprise, the platform also automatically supplied specifics, such as mentioning a Singaporean law when instructed to generate content for people in Singapore.

The makers of ChatGPT have clearly suggested that the AI-driven tool has the in-built ability to challenge incorrect premises and reject inappropriate requests. While the system apparently has inbuilt guardrails designed to prevent any kind of criminal activities, however, with a few tweaks, it generated a near flawless phishing email that sounded ‘Weirdly Human’. 

This could mean more trouble for markets that are highly vulnerable to phishing attacks such as the Philippines. In fact, the enormity of phishing campaigns in the country prompted the government to begin investigations. This resulted in the approval of the SIM Card Registration Act, a law that mandates users to register personal information upon SIM card activation and purchase in an effort to encourage responsibility and give law enforcement an identification tool for resolving crimes.

Sean Duca, Vice President and Regional Chief Security Officer for Asia Pacific & Japan at Palo Alto Networks, said, “Considering the looming threats of an ever smarter and technologically advanced hacking landscape, the cybersecurity industry must be equally resourced to fight such AI-powered exploits. In the long run, the industry’s vision cannot be that a swarm of human threat hunters try to sporadically fix this with guesswork.” 

The need of the hour is to take intelligent action to neutralise these evolving threats. On the positive side, Autonomous Response is today significantly addressing threats without human intervention. However, as AI-powered attacks become a part of everyday life, businesses, governments and individuals impacted by such automated malware must increasingly rely on emerging technologies such as AI and ML to generate their own automated responses.

As AI continues to be developed, businesses will continue to face a number of challenges in navigating the AI cybersecurity landscape. In particular, there is considerable focus on finding the balance between machines, humans, and ethical considerations. 

“Establishing corporate policies is critical to doing business ethically, while improving cybersecurity. We need to establish effective governance and legal frameworks that enable greater trust in AI technologies being implemented around us to be safe, reliable, and contribute to a just and sustainable world. The delicate balance between AI and humans will therefore emerge as a key factor towards successful cybersecurity in which trust, transparency, and accountability supplement the benefits of machines,” Duca concluded.

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About Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks is the world’s cybersecurity leader. We innovate to outpace cyberthreats, so organizations can embrace technology with confidence. We provide next-gen cybersecurity to thousands of customers globally, across all sectors. Our best-in-class cybersecurity platforms and services are backed by industry-leading threat intelligence and strengthened by state-of-the-art automation. Whether deploying our products to enable the Zero Trust Enterprise, responding to a security incident, or partnering to deliver better security outcomes through a world-class partner ecosystem, we’re committed to helping ensure each day is safer than the one before. It’s what makes us the cybersecurity partner of choice.

At Palo Alto Networks, we’re committed to bringing together the very best people in service of our mission, so we’re also proud to be the cybersecurity workplace of choice, recognized among Newsweek’s Most Loved Workplaces (2021), Comparably Best Companies for Diversity (2021) and HRC Best Places for LGBTQ Equality (2022). For more information, visit www.paloaltonetworks.com.