The Important Role of Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity

Cyber-attacks on organizations are innumerable and growing every day in record numbers. Cybersecurity professionals are facing an unprecedented threat environment, coupled with a shortage of skilled personnel and increasingly sophisticated attacks.

Analyzing and improving an organization’s cybersecurity posture means relying on tools that do not rely solely on human intervention. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have become an essential factor in protecting data and handling more and more complex threats with fewer people. We analyze its advantages, how to implement it, and practical examples.

Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity Market

The global cyber threat landscape is changing, and internet consumers are facing very different attacks than years ago. Whether it’s massive, automated botnets infecting devices or phishing attacks, the situation is worrying.

Adoption data for connected devices reaches 1.7 billion in North America alone, and the rise of IoT or 5G is increasing this number exponentially worldwide. In addition, mobile devices are part of our daily lives, so threats to them are growing exponentially in the form of insecure browsing.

Until a few years ago, security solutions were based on industry professionals researching, analyzing, and adding new malware samples to lists designed to keep track of them. However, these reactive solutions are giving way to more proactive approaches, where machine learning and AI algorithms play a key role.

According to the firm Pillsbury, 49% of executives think that artificial intelligence is the best tool to counter cyber attacks.

As a result, it also predicts that AI spending in the cybersecurity field will increase by 24% annually through 2027. This will mean reaching a market value of $46 billion.

Advantages of Introducing AI in Your Security Strategy

Introducing Artificial Intelligence into a cyber security solution is incredibly useful for quickly automating decision-making processes and creating patterns from incomplete or modified data.

These algorithms learn from real-world data, such as existing security threats or examples found by researchers. As a result, they provide numerous advantages such as:

• Reinforce the work of employees: One of the big problems in the industry is the lack of trained professionals, so AI can complement that gap. It is also a scalable solution for other security tools and frees up valuable resources by quickly identifying threats, allowing workers to focus on more complex tasks.
• Detect threats faster: Investigations of individual alerts can take days to complete; therefore, AI-powered security tools are able to classify events in much less time, enabling rapid incident response. These systems provide the global, as well as industry-specific, threat insights to better formulate vital prioritization decisions based on current and future potential attacks.
• Minimal margin of error: Although ML systems are not magic and can make mistakes, their margin of error is miniscule. This is reflected in the fact that their rapid decision-making process reduces user friction and does not adversely affect the user experience. This improves cybersecurity at scale and covers a large area in the threat landscape.
• Protect against new attacks – Security threats, malware, and antagonistic tactics often evolve based on the same old malware and threats. Since they evolve linearly, AI is a very useful tool, as rarely are modifications made to new threats sufficient to defeat algorithms. Artificial Intelligence enables superior predictive intelligence through natural language processing, which provides insights into new anomalies, cyberattacks, and prevention strategies.
• Fighting bots: Bots account for a large portion of digital traffic, but they can be dangerous, as they could steal credentials, create fake accounts or defraud data. Automated threats cannot be addressed with manual responses, so AI helps to understand the traffic on each website and distinguish between “good” bots and malicious ones.
• Better endpoint protection: the number of devices to work remotely is greatly increased since the start of the pandemic, and AI can be key to protecting them. Although antivirus and VPN solutions help against malware and ransomware attacks, if virus definitions lag behind it can be dangerous. AI-based endpoint protection takes a different approach by establishing a baseline of behavior for the endpoint through a process of repeated training. If something out of the ordinary occurs, it detects it and takes action, providing proactive protection.

How to Fight Cybersecurity Threats with AI

The advantages mentioned just above are only a small part of the potential of what AI can do to improve a company’s cybersecurity.

Incident classification and analysis is crucial during the response process to eliminate false positives and determine how to reverse incidents. This is why many companies are introducing artificial intelligence algorithms to threats as part of their response, which is improving their processes by processing larger amounts of data in less time while predicting potential attacks.

The areas of security where AI is becoming more important are:

• Credit card fraud detection and risk reduction.
• Biometric technology.
• Spam filters.
• Cameras and crime prevention.
• Security automation.
• Protection of sensitive information.
• Identification of false personal information.
• Home security systems.
• Zero-day malware detection.
• Border control security.
• Bomb detection under vehicles.
• Military reconnaissance in the modern battlefield.
• Infectious disease detection.
• And many more.

AI-based Cybersecurity Solutions

The impact of AI on our lives will become increasingly important. It can be used by cybersecurity professionals to reinforce best practices and minimize the scope of attacks rather than continuing on the lookout for potential malicious activity.

The human hand needs help when performing threat analysis and identification to minimize risk and improve the security posture.

At Plain Concepts, we have extensive knowledge of cloud solutions, as well as leading developments to eliminate vulnerabilities and strengthen the security of all types of data hosted in the cloud for our customers.

This has allowed us to win the Partner of the Year Security award thanks to having developed the Security technical guides and scripts for the deployment of Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure for the National Cryptologic Center (CCN-CERT), an organization attached to the National Intelligence Center (CNI).

The publication of these technical guides for the deployment of Microsoft services facilitates the IT staff of the CCN-CERT to comply with the National Security Scheme (ENS), in order to ensure the IT and information security of agencies, entities and institutions dependent on the Spanish public administrations. This has accredited us as an Implementing Entity of CCN-STIC Guides, a unique recognition in cybersecurity.

If you need help deploying a robust and secure data strategy with all kinds of technologies such as AI, we can help!