Hannah Ji-Otto Featured in St. Louis Business Journal “Table of Experts” on Cybersecurity
Hannah Ji-Otto, a Quarles & Brady Intellectual Property partner and member of the firm’s Data Asset Management, Privacy & Cybersecurity team, was one of three participants in a St. Louis Business Journal “Table of Experts” feature focused on key cybersecurity issues faced by companies.
Ji-Otto addressed common blind spots companies have when it comes to cybersecurity, the importance of data governance, cyber insurance options and more. An excerpt:
BOBROFF: Hannah, what trends are we seeing in cyber-incidents and the costs associated with mitigating those risks?
JI-OTTO: Lately, we’re seeing that threat actors are increasingly using AI to carry out their schemes and attacks. IBM’s current Cost of a Data Breach report for 2025 which came out this summer, reported that one in six organizations experienced breaches linked to AI-driven attacks, and the most common types of AI-enabled techniques include phishing and deepfake impersonations. Shadow AI was also involved in 20% of data breaches. I also learned from my forensic friends that some of the threat-actor groups have started using AI chatbots to take ransomware payments. It’s ironic that their business is doing so well that they need to implement an AI chatbot to manage ransom payment.
The costs associated with these risks are substantial. There are direct costs, including containing the breach, but then there are the costs of forensics, notifying individuals and regulators, credit monitoring, and PR. Downtime is also a major factor, along with system restoration. According to the same IBM report, the average breach cost for United States organizations hit a record high of $10.22 million.