Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity

What Can it Really Do? - “With cyberattacks growing exponentially, information & system security procedures and best practices have become more vital today than ever before. Organizations have discovered that implementing a range of cybersecurity layers and tools does not necessarily ensure they are genuinely protected or breach-proof.

As businesses invest in combating cyberattacks, it remains challenging to predict emerging campaigns. Security experts cannot reliably discern what the next malware or ransomware attack will be. Without such insights, it is tough to defend an organization’s perimeter and infrastructure – something that cybercriminals clearly understand and look to cash in on.

Having strong support of advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), has become a critical means of support for cybersecurity activities and system protection. Information security (infosec) experts and solutions can deploy AI technology to analyze user behavior, deduce patterns, detect anomalies and irregularities that heretofore would go unseen.

Frequent and Complex Cybersecurity Risks in the Digital World

Companies are increasingly investing in teams and technologies to identify digital exposure and related risks that could potentially provide an opportunity for cyberattack. Cyber attacks have moved beyond data breaches and privacy; they’ve become far more sophisticated disrupting businesses, industries, supply chains and government agencies. Since 2018, organizations have witnessed explosive growth in the number of attacks and the associated distractions cybercrime cases and related massive data breaches perpetuate. Security analysts predict that cybercrime will cost the economy $6 trillion by the end of this year, up from $3 trillion in 2015.

Combining AI Capabilities with Cybersecurity

Companies today have tremendous cybersecurity challenges: vast and expanding attack surfaces, hundreds or thousands of devices deployed, an ever increasing number of attack vectors, significant shortfalls in human information security expertise and terabytes, in many cases petabytes, of data being processed daily, etc. To handle this overwhelming security assignment, infosec teams can turn to automation by combining AI capabilities with other data protection strategies and technologies. Having AI integrated into the cybersecurity posture of a business can deliver multiple benefits, including:

1. Reduced Detection and Response Time

One of the benefits of leveraging AI in cybersecurity is reduced defense, detection and response time. Instead of hiring infosec experts to set up data protection and firewall policies, manage backups and detect threats, AI will change the traditional approach by enabling an organization to monitor and respond to incidents faster with more accuracy.

Anti-malware solutions based upon a Machine Learning (ML) database can quickly access information about different malware forms that security experts and tools have discovered before. In case a tweaked variant of the malicious software appears, the AI-based system analyzes and correlates it against the database and blocks the program if it had previously been deemed malicious.

2. Improved Accuracy in Detection

In addition to reduced response time, next-generation firewalls can utilize AI and ML technology to detect and block malicious network packets flagged as threats. AI technology makes it possible for organizations to identify complicated hacking techniques, such as obfuscation and polymorphism.

Several firms have already adopted AI and ML to strengthen their security infrastructure. For instance, Google’s Gmail service uses ML to block more than 100 million spam emails daily. Google can now reliably block 99.9 percent of spam using AI in addition to rule-based filters thus keeping their email service clear. While rule-based filters block obvious spam, ML discovers new patterns that flag an email as trusted or malicious.

AI and ML also learn over time, drawing from historical data to identify emerging threats. AI-based security tools use historical logs to build profiles on users, networks and hosts, allowing the solution to detect and respond to any deviation from normal behavior.

3. Bridging the Cybersecurity Skills Gap

Organizations face a shortage of infosec engineers with relevant skills and knowledge to keep cybercriminals on a tight leash. Without a doubt, the most resource-intensive tasks in any security team involve analyzing and correlating massive volumes of logs from security devices and sensors. The process requires an adequately staffed team to ensure that network breaches are detected immediately, blocking hackers from planting time bombs while achieving privilege escalation and lateral movement.

AI-driven protection systems support labor-intensive activities like behavioral analytics, zero-day threat detection, and the identification of anomalies in correlated data. These security solutions enhance available skills to fend off the sophistication and speed of current cyber threats.

4. Breach Risk Prediction

AI-based security systems can analyze and learn from historical behavior and logs to predict how and where an organization is likely to be breached. In effect, businesses can utilize the insights to allocate tools and resources in weak areas, effectively improving the firm’s cyber resilience.

Apart from uncovering new kinds of malicious traffic and software, AI-based network monitoring tools can track user activity in real-time to develop a typical behavior profile and respond to anomalies.

5. Enhanced Incident Response

AI-powered security systems deliver improved context for detection, prioritization, and response to alerts. Such information enables organizations to respond to incidents faster and identify root causes to prevent future threats. AI-driven security tools operate without affecting the daily activities of a business – acting upon malicious behavior proportionately, without locking down the whole network.

Securus360: An AI-Driven Managed eXtended Detection & Response (MXDR) Solution

As the enterprise attack surface continues to grow and evolve rapidly, organizations will continue to see an escalation of time-varying signals and alerts that security teams should analyze to calculate risk. To handle this unprecedented challenge, enterprises can utilize AI-based security solutions to sort through the noise and improve their team’s ability to detect real threats and reduce breach risk. AI-driven data protection products like the Securus360 MXDR platform are well suited to correlate large data sets to identify anomalies.

One of the key goals of AI in cybersecurity is to develop algorithms that think like a human, analyzing data, making decisions and taking action like a security engineer would. AI and ML leverage neural networks that provide a framework to mimic the human brain. Ultimately, the technology offers unparalleled power to run the enourmous volume of computations required for a machine to achieve human-like expert decision-making and response.

Securus360 offers an all-inclusive MXDR solution that offers the industry’s most effective and fully integrated platform, delivering threat visibility across the entire infrastructure of a business, including: endpoints, servers, network infrastructure, cloud instances and end-user behavior, all on a single pane of glass.

Securus360 utilizes an award-winning, AI-driven, cloud-native approach that combines machine learning, security automation and human intelligence to create a high speed and high touch cyber defense solution that proactively hunts, detects, and helps neutralize threats before they can impact your business.