A large Russian bank predicted the emergence of “great combinators” among the hackers of the future

The development of autonomous IT systems based on artificial intelligence technologies will free up resources among hackers.

This may contribute to the emergence of “great schemers” who will create large-scale strategies for hacker attacks on various structures, Vadim Kulik, Deputy President and Chairman of the Board of VTB, said in the VTB analytical review “Security in the Bank of the Future.”

One of the main IT trends for the next few years will be the active development of AI agents – IT systems capable of independently initiating certain decisions and performing actions to achieve given goals, noted Vadim Kulik. The development of large language models will ensure the creation of entire systems in which a large number of AI agents will interact with each other to complete assigned tasks.

“Improving multi-agent systems will contribute to a multiple increase in the speed at which hackers search for vulnerabilities. The release of resources will lead to the fact that in the coming years, “great combinators” will appear among hackers who will create attack strategies, plan key scenarios, etc., while AI agents will take over all the routine. On the side of defending organizations, the situation will develop similarly: there will be specialists building the defense perimeter at the strategic level, and all mechanical work, including writing code, will be automated with the help of AI agents,” notes Vadim Kulik.

The development of AI agents will also lead to large-scale changes in user scenarios when receiving services, the top manager continued. “More and more AI agents will appear – both on the business side, to provide services to clients and users, and on the side of the clients and users themselves, to receive quality services from various suppliers. Accordingly, with the development of AI, chains will appear in communication channels in which AI agents will be built. In this case, clients will no longer directly interact with the bank application, but first the client will contact his agent, and the user agent will contact the business agent. This, in turn, will require adaptation of the IT systems of all services,” noted Vadim Kulik.

The analytical review “Security in the Bank of the Future” was prepared by the VTB Technology Research Center specifically for the Ural Forum “Cyber ​​Security in Finance”. It included an analysis of a wide range of Russian and foreign sources, as well as a sociological study of the bank regarding the attitude of Russians to attacks on banks and the activities of fraudsters.