The Future of Cybersecurity: Artificial Intelligence

By CIOReview | Monday, May 28, 2018

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With increasing threats from sophisticated hackers, the cybersecurity industry is undergoing a transformational shift in terms of design and implementation of security products and services. Realizing the impracticability of continued human interventions to track and counter-attack threats, industry stalwarts are laser focused on leveraging artificial intelligence to fortify their security products and services. Recent malicious attack of WannaCry ransomware on financial institutions as well as on healthcare industry has taught a major lesson to enterprises on the need to reinvent their cybersecurity infrastructure. Further, the rising demand for AI and ML technologies can be attributed to the evolution in cutting-edge paradigms, such as big data and cloud computing.

Discerning the need to bolster their cybersecurity, the organizations have started to integrate AI into their IT infrastructure for identifying attacks and security breaches. On successful implementation, AI-enabled security products will be able to identify, analyze and shield against cyber-attacks by automatically detecting and wading them off the system.

The data is growing exponentially, and so is the demand to protect these data. By 2022, the estimations show that there will be over 3 million vacant positions for security professionals alone. As a result of which the cybersecurity industry will be left with two options: either to fill these positions or revamp their existing infrastructure by leveraging smart technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). By implementing AI, enterprises will not only be able to control the cost of employing additional workforce but can also streamline business operations for higher efficiency and speed.

AI is a two-edged sword, having its own pros and cons. While AI provides an array of benefits in terms of automating the entire process, from identifying threat to taking counter-measures; on the other end, it may open doors to many vulnerabilities, providing opportunities to hackers to exploit AI for creating destructive algorithms that support their intention.