Expert says AI is the top cybersecurity issue faced by retailers
Expert says AI is the top cybersecurity issue faced by retailers
https://nrf.com/nrfcom/blog/expert-says-ai-is-the-top-cybersecurity-issue-faced-by-retailers
Publish Date: 2026-03-24 15:30:00
Source Domain: nrf.com
When cybersecurity expert Jeff Greene was asked at NRF’s recent Retail Law Summit what should be at the top of the checklist for in-house attorneys in charge of cyber compliance this year, his answer was clear.
“It’s AI,” he said without hesitation. “It’s the No. 1 issue that companies face.”
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Greene, an attorney who previously headed the cybersecurity division at the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and was chief of cyber response at the White House National Security Council during the Biden administration, is now co-founder of the security consulting firm Civira Partners. He was the keynote speaker during a session on security and threats to retail data moderated by NRF Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel Stephanie Martz.
“There are so many angles to it,” Greene said of issues involving artificial intelligence that need to be addressed. “How you’re using it … how your vendors are using it, what they’re doing with your data, what your policies are.”
A key question, he said, is “has AI helped the attackers or the defenders?”
AI has fixed the poor grammar that was once the hallmark of a phishing email trying to trick the recipient into clicking on a malicious link, Green said. It has also led to “spear phishing,” which weaves in subjects like hobbies or favorite sports to make a phishing email look like it’s coming from someone the recipient knows. And it filters out people with the same name to be sure the message is reaching the right target.
On the other hand, the scale and speed that make it easy for AI to run a “brute force” attack to discover passwords also make it easy to use AI to block such attacks, he said. And with large companies facing more cyberattacks than any security center can handle, artificial intelligence is a “classic force multiplier” that…
