Artificial Intelligence and CyberSecurity

The application of AI for Digital Safety has several benefits and usages:

• The ability to detect and identify anomalous patterns and vulnerabilities within extensive networks. It is time-consuming or rather complicated for humans to monitor and analyze large-scale networks. With AI, analyzing data from multiple endpoints becomes more efficient and faster which leads to quick detection of vulnerabilities and threats before any attack is executed. AI-powered Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) detect any unusual or malicious traffic over normal traffic that enters a network. A real-life application of Artificial Intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) platforms uses big data analytics and Machine Learning (ML) to detect problems by analyzing large amounts of data and predicting to prevent future issues.

• Accurate risk assessments and improved threat intelligence – Precise identification, analysis, and evaluation of risks, and recommendations of strong security controls for discovered risks can be accomplished through the compiled intelligence of AI. This also leads to the advancement of automated security models, thus building a strong organizational security posture.

Ability to automate tasks 

• Time-intensive operations can be automated without any intervals, which will increase response times and reduce the pressure of handling complex security tasks for human analysts. IBM states that adopting AI and automation in security saves more than 14 weeks in threat detection and response times, and helps to reduce the overall costs of a data breach.

AI in Cyber Attacks

• Unfortunately, the same AI technology used for defensive purposes can also be used by threat actors to breach systems. Attackers use AI-driven tools that constantly change their malware signatures to evade detection. They also use tools that spawn large amounts of malware to increase the power of their attacks. Using AI, malicious actors are able to launch new attacks, created by analyzing an organization’s vulnerabilities through spyware.

Examples of malware commonly used by black hats.

     Adware

Fraudtool

Hijack

Ransomware

Riskware

Spyware

Trojan

Virus

Worm