Lookout uses AI to guard against mobile social engineering threats

As we do more and more on our mobile devices it’s clear that the front line of cyber defense isn't the corporate server it's the employee's phone.

As AI boosts social engineering, hackers are bypassing traditional firewalls to target people directly with smishing and phishing, making every employee a critical, and often vulnerable, defender against highly convincing threats.

Lookout is launching an AI-powered mobile security solution that helps organizations protect against evolving social engineering threats.

Lookout Smishing AI focuses on malicious intent and context. Instead of simply looking for a known bad link, it analyzes the nature of the message itself. In the past security solutions have relied on finding malicious links or mis-matched sender details, but as attacks become more sophisticated this is no longer enough.

This new solution uses the power of large language models (LLMs) which allows it to proactively detect previously unseen threats, even those that don't contain a URL or any other obvious malicious payload.

Of course privacy is important when scanning things like text messages so both security administrators and end users must provide explicit consent by opting in to enable this protection. Plus only messages from unknown senders are scanned, those from trusted contacts aren’t. To further ensure privacy no message data is stored or used to train other models.

Richard Leung, principal product manager at Lookout, writes on the company’s blog, “The launch of Smishing AI is more than just a new feature; it's a clear signal of the strategic direction Lookout is taking. We are committed to developing AI-first capabilities that protect organizations against the evolving tactics of modern threat actors. As the human layer becomes the primary target, we will continue to use AI to improve our social engineering protections and expand them across additional platforms and attack vectors.”

You can read more on the Lookout site.

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