Artificial Intelligence has a special use in cyber security.

Like most industries, technology, techniques and information is changing at a rapid pace. The advantage of Artificial Intelligence is the ability to learn and accommodate for these changes. For example, in the case of malicious software (such as ransomware), AI is able to develop to defend against continuously changing attacks.

The main objective of AI is to make the process of identifying and remediating security incidents much smoother, time effective and improve detection. The existing methodology for cyber secure is to implement protection, (e.g. anti-malware software, firewall) then log traffic to determine if an attack is happening.

There is a theme with all existing protection methodologies in cyber security currently – this is intervention. Whether it be configuring software or hardware, accessing a management console to view logs, deploying patches, remediating vulnerabilities and more – it is all a manual process.

AI aims to take the burden in this regard, and complete tasks outside of core hours to ensure minimal interference. The complexity of the AI, in tandem with useful data for the AI to learn with means it can identify patterns and resolve security incidents significantly faster than a network manager may typically be able to.

If AI is developed and trained in such a way that it has a high success rate, then this can be reinforced by other experts in the field.

For example, in a scenario where detecting a security incident may take a specialist a long time, AI may be able to identify this in a fraction of the time, leaving the specialist more time to remediate.

However, we need to take time to develop these tools, and use them in conjunction with experienced personnel to ensure a high level of security across the board.