Applying AI in Cybersecurity
There are numerous benefits for enterprises if AI cybersecurity is utilized as part of the organization’s defences. Organizations can prevent downtime if they have robust cybersecurity systems that employ AI. Data from a 2019 PwC Digital Trust Insights survey showed that nearly half of their respondents (47% of a total of 3,500 organizations across the globe) reported that cyber incidents caused downtime between 2017 to 2019.
With the increase in cyber-attacks occurring each year, these numbers are expected to increase further. With the help of AI, organizations can automate cyber-attack detection and response. According to Webroot, AI technologies (like automated detection and response [ADR] tools) can be used to automate everyday security tasks without relying solely on human teams. AI-based cybersecurity systems learn and adapt to ever-evolving cyber-attacks and malware. Automation is particularly useful for shifting the responsibility of handling monotonous tasks from your IT and cybersecurity employees. This allows them to shift their focus to projects and tasks that require their expertise, skills, and critical thinking capabilities.
AT&T emphasizes the benefits of blending AI and cyber security as a reasonable strategy for adaptive cyber security. All of this shows that the organization can benefit greatly by preventing disastrous attacks if they integrate AI into their cyber security defenses, which will result in more accurate, timely, and robust detection of cyber-attacks.
According to MIT News, detecting the data generated in a cyber-attack among all the normal data generated by the organization’s customers and employees is nothing less than finding a needle in a haystack. Therefore, it seems necessary to human-machine collaboration, which will ultimately optimally cover key areas of cybersecurity.
AI in cybersecurity analyses system usage patterns to identify potentially malicious activities or threat actors and predict cyber-attacks before they happen. AI-enabled automated monitoring protects systems 24/7 and enables organizations to take preventive measures before harm is done. Some major AI in cybersecurity applications include:
- Malware & phishing detection
- Knowledge consolidation
- Detection & prioritizing new threats
- Breach risk prediction
- Task automation
In a different perspective, like in any other technology domain, integrating AI in cybersecurity systems poses several challenges, such as:
- Data manipulation: AI systems use data to understand historical patterns. Hackers can gain access to the training data, alter it to include biases and damage the efficiency of the models. Furthermore, data can be altered to benefit the hacker more.
- AI-powered cyber-attacks: Hackers can use AI techniques to develop intelligent malware that can modify itself to avoid detection from even the most advanced cybersecurity software.
- Data unavailability: The performance of AI models depends on the volume and quality of data. If sufficient high-quality training data is not provided or the data contains bias issues, the AI system will not be as accurate as expected. Based on this data, an inadequately trained model will result in false positives and a false sense of security. Any threats will go undetected and lead to substantial losses.
- Privacy concerns: To properly understand user patterns, AI models are fed real world user data. Without adequate sensitive data masking or encryption, user data is prone to privacy and security issues, favouring malicious actors.
But the benefits from AI and Cybersecurity integration benefits outweigh the concerns as –
- AI continuously learns – AI improves its knowledge to “understand” cybersecurity threats and cyber risk by consuming billions of data artifacts.
- AI reasoning finds threats faster – AI analyses relationships between threats like malicious files, suspicious IP addresses or insiders in seconds or minutes.
- AI eliminates time-consuming tasks – AI provides curated risk analysis, reducing the time security analysts take to make critical decisions and remediate threats.
AI/ML Workbench on Cybersecurity Incidents
Artificial Intelligence is a powerful tool for identifying vulnerabilities, threats, and attacks in cyberspace. Security-focused AI can detect and analysing enormous amounts of data without interruption, seeking malicious activities, and providing necessary recommendations.
The benefits are vast; however, AI software is itself vulnerable to data manipulation and poisoning, which destroys the integrity of their programs. Necessary procedures must be adapted to mitigate these issues and to protect and strengthen the functionality of AI.
