Using artificial intelligence (AI) in cybersecurity

The Growing Problem of Enterprise Network Security

When it comes to integrating AI-based processes into security, it isn’t just useful; it’s become essential and is rapidly becoming mission critical to organizations of all sizes.

The rapidly expanding attack surface of virtually every enterprise, with the proliferation of  Internet of Things (IoT) devices and cloud systems is a leading reason why artificial intelligence (AI) has become essential in security.

Organizations have moved from securing thousands of devices to potentially millions. Within this new surge in network traffic are billions of time-varying signals, all of which must be analyzed to assess risk. Security is becoming incredibly more complex in just a handful of years because there is far more to attack.

Add to this the fact that malicious attackers also have AI at their disposal: Their attacks have become more sophisticated and frequent – with AI allowing them to automate breach attempts. Those threats can’t possibly by handled manually with even the largest organizations now suffer from a severe lack of security professionals.

Many organizations exploit cloud technology to expand their digital operations geographically, but the downside is that this expansion augments network complexity and the attack surface further.

The global cost of a typical enterprise data breach has reached $3.86 million, according to a report by Norton, requiring an average recovery period of 196 days. The problem is getting worse to the point that enterprise security is now beyond human scale. New allies are needed in this effort, with AI in cybrsecurity rapidly becoming a much-needed savior.

How AI in Cybersecurity Solves Problems

If the list of new complications that have entered the cybersecurity mix is daunting, there’s nonetheless a positive: for every complication, there’s an AI opportunity. The list is long:

Automated threat detection. With AI, threats can be detected before they become costly. The security system can potentially be trained to detect a dedicated denial of service attack (DDoS) attack long before it becomes critical.

Threat exposure. Through AI, it’s now possible for a security system to be frequently updated on both global and industry-specific threats, and to prioritize them according to their local potential to occur.

To read the complete article, visit IoT World Today.