AI and Cybersecurity

Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a prominent technology in cybersecurity applications, and is set to play a major role in the security architecture of future enterprise networks.

Artificial intelligence and automation adoption rates are rising, and investment plans are high on enterprise radars. AI is in pilots or use at 41% of companies, with another 42% actively researching it, according to the 2019 IDG Digital Business Study.

Cybersecurity has emerged as an ideal use for these technologies. Digital business has opened a score of new risks and vulnerabilities that, combined with a security skills gap, is weighing down security teams. As a result, more organizations are looking at AI and machine learning as a way to relieve some of the burden on security teams by sifting through high volumes of security data and automating routine tasks.

“We have a lot of repetitive tasks – we can build the right framework so those controls happen automatically to a point where we need a human looking at it,” Ken Foster, head of global cyber risk governance at Fiserv, said on the new CSO Executive Sessions podcast. “So, I can repurpose my smart people who I want making the decisions that I’m not comfortable AI making. If I can get that designed well enough to pull some workload off of them, we’ll start moving the needle faster.”

Security leaders and practitioners were asked to describe how AI and automation technologies will come into play this year.“2020 needs to be the year where AI in cybersecurity moves beyond the hype and becomes common practice,” says Tim Wulgaert (@timwulgaert), owner and lead consultant, FJAM Consulting.

IT and security leaders suggest that detection and identification of potential threats make ideal initial use cases for AI/automation.

“The volume of data being generated is perhaps the largest challenge in cybersecurity,” says David Mytton (@davidmytton), CTO and expert in residence, Seedcamp. “As more and more systems become instrumented — who has logged in and when, what was downloaded and when, what was accessed and when — the problem shifts from knowing that ‘something’ has happened, to highlighting that ‘something unusual’ has happened.”

Content courtesy of CIO.