by Ewelina Woloszyn, July 5, 2022
The cyber-attack environment continues to grow at a staggering rate and the number of bots cruising around the internet is alarming. Consider also the growing amount of information stored electronically, a lot of it in cloud-based systems and you start to see the problem. Can Artificial Intelligence solve this problem, or reduce the risks in an organization. I strongly believe AI, with its machine learning and pattern recognition are a perfect fit in cyber-security systems.
Today, in our software based cyber world, it takes time for researched to detect a new threat and then additional time to write software to detect and eradicate it. This traditional approach cannot keep up with the ever-evolving threat landscape. This is one critical area where AI can be applied. Using predictive intelligence and Natural Language Processing, AI can quickly detect anomalies in systems and devices.
Taking on the internet of Bots is another critical area. The internet is full of these automated bots and you can’t battle something that is automated with a manual approach. AI can easily take on this task. For instance, looking at and detecting patterns an area AI is already being used in.
Using AI in these areas allows for the AI-based cyber security system to also predict risks or threat areas within the system and build defenses against them.
Tools being used today, including VPN’s rely on signatures and virus/malware definitions, which must be up-to-date to truly protect the systems they are meant to protect. AI easily takes us in the right direction and gives us a better set of tools.
There are a couple of potential downsides to using AI such as people and financial resources for companies using AI-based cyber protection, and also advserarial-AI attacks. Cyber criminals could use AI to fool machine learning models and pattern detection, tricking the system into accepting the newly detected patterns, or behavior as normal or even favorable.
In summary, cyber security needs to continue evolving and AI is the best possible future for this.
