IT pros are looking hard at the potential for artificial intelligence-driven tools to transform their approach to offensive security. That’s a key takeaway from a poll this month of attendees at an ActualTech Media webinar.
In general, offensive security refers to proactive and adversarial security measures to identify, exploit, and fix vulnerabilities before malicious attackers can find and exploit them. To be clear, the “offensive” in offensive security means going on offense against your own networks and infrastructure, not to “hacking back” against perceived attackers, which would be illegal in many cases and, given challenges with attribution, could be misdirected toward fellow victims rather than enemies.
Offensive security consists of elements like penetration testing, red teaming, vulnerability management, exploit development, and social engineering. IT pros seem excited by the possibilities of turning over some of those processes to AI – 44 percent of poll respondents, a plurality, said they were exploring AI solutions, although they haven’t implemented them yet.
IT pros are more in the kicking-the-tires stage than the adoption stage, though. Only 7 percent of respondents described themselves as actively integrating AI-driven tools into their security processes. Meanwhile, skepticism is real: 11 percent of respondents were skeptical about the effectiveness of AI in offensive security. Another big group, 24 percent, are continuing to rely on traditional methods with no immediate plans for AI adoption — which could be counted as another faction of the skeptic camp. The other 13 percent were unaware of AI applications in offensive security.
Overall, those integrating or exploring AI-driven tools for offensive security outnumbered those sticking with traditional approaches, skeptical of AI, or unaware of AI’s role in offensive security by a narrow margin at 51 percent to 49 percent.
Read more about the poll results and analysis by Scott Bekker here: https://lnkd.in/gk3gFkEv