Is AI the future fortress of IT security?

Steve Young at Commvault describes the increasing importance of artificial intelligence as a tool for cyber-security

 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is in the news daily - whether it’s an advancement made in healthcare, the latest technology innovation, or a new feature of our virtual home assistants. With the power to surpass the capabilities of the human mind, AI is being adopted at an unprecedented speed across a variety of industries. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the AI market is predicted to reach $62.5 billion by the end of 2022.

 

The cyber-security industry is certainly not missing out on the benefits of AI, with 45% of large companies and 29% of SMEs in one survey saying they had implemented AI for security purposes. We can only expect to see this increase as the ‘AI in cyber-security’ market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 24.2% from 2022 to 2029.

 

Stay one step ahead…

The ever-growing opportunities presented by AI have the potential to – and are in the process of – transforming the cyber-security space. AI systems become more intelligent with each decision that they make. This allows AI security to become more effective with each attack.

 

This is especially important as remote working becomes a permanent working practice for many, making endpoint security even more critical than previously. Implementing AI into cyber-security practices can keep you one step ahead of cyber criminals.

 

Although antivirus solutions can protect systems against the latest threats, with the constant development of new malware, they are starting to lag behind the fast-paced cyber criminals.

 

AI-driven security continuously monitors endpoint activities based on behaviour learned through a repeated training process. Using sophisticated algorithms, AI can immediately identify anything out of the ordinary. Even the smallest of abnormalities can be detected, helping to deny unauthorised access and reduce security response times.

 

In addition, with this knowledge and its ability to analyse vast amounts of data at lightning speed, AI can also generate superior predictive intelligence. As a result, organisations using AI can gain advanced insights into new anomalies, cyber attacks, and prevention strategies. This enables cyber-security teams to adapt their strategy to best defend against the altering threat landscape.

 

… but watch your back

Unfortunately, the advantages of AI are also its downfalls. Whilst organisations can benefit from the insights of AI to defend against threats, cyber criminals can harness AI technologies to launch attacks. Hackers are all too aware of the capabilities of AI and utilise its advancements to create intelligent malware that evades detection from traditional security solutions.

 

The ability of AI technologies to learn and adapt is of significant value to hackers. When creating malware, cyber criminals can use AI to determine an organisation’s routine and gain information on its IT environment, including its patching schedule and communication channels, to discover when the systems are most vulnerable.

 

With this information, hackers can make their attacks undetectable by ensuring they blend into the organisation’s environment and routine. Thus, traditional security solutions are unlikely to identify it as suspicious activity, granting access to the systems and allowing cyber criminals to cause chaos. 

 

Even more concerning is that, with the help of AI, even the unsuccessful attacks are valuable to cyber criminals. The AI programme can reveal exactly why the attack was prevented, through its collection of knowledge from every action it makes. This information grants them the ability to adapt so, inevitably, hackers will succeed in their attempts that follow.

 

Using AI to bounce back quicker

As an emerging technology, despite its breakthrough in many industries, AI still has a number of capabilities that are currently not being utilised. One such area is backup and recovery. Although AI can be very effective in preventing attacks, the ability to quickly recover data remains the most important aspect of data protection – which AI can help with too! Its agility can save organisations time and resources whilst deriving value-added insights.

 

Across industries, AI has been credited for automating routine tasks that use up the time of skilled workers. This is also the case for backup and recovery. Automating backup solutions can free up employees’ time which can be invested into more complex or creative tasks. This helps to improve other business practices, all with the assurance that backups are still going ahead and data is safe.

 

Similarly, by applying the power of AI to datasets, organisations can gain valuable insights into their data, which can be used to drive business decisions and innovation. 

 

Security professionals are forever looking for new ways to secure sensitive information. AI offers such opportunities but CISOs should proceed with caution. Whilst AI can be very effective in preventing cyber attacks, you should never get complacent with data backup strategy.

 

Cyber criminals are only ever one step behind you and the importance of backup and recovery shouldn’t be underestimated.

 

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Steve Young is UKI Sales Engineering Director at Commvault.

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com