Meanwhile, relieving individuals of such tasks allows them to do the work that humans are actually better suited for. “AI is just another tool in a cybersecurity professional’s belt that can help them focus on the more critical and strategic work to be done in cybersecurity by relieving them of the more repetitive tasks,” Fisch adds.
“It’s a needle in a haystack sort of thing,” says Von Welch, executive director for cybersecurity innovations at Indiana University and director of IU’s Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research. “The problem is not finding the incident. It’s getting rid of the hay that’s surrounding the needle that’s the incident.”
AI Technology Can Analyze Reports
Mike Spisak, CTO of security for IBM Garage, says that AI can help sort through the massive amounts of information released on a monthly basis. “It’s impossible for anyone to possibly ingest that much data,” he says, “but this is something computers can do very well,” especially because AI’s natural language understanding has improved enough to comprehend context (for instance, the difference between a healthcare virus versus a computing virus. This is a specialty of IBM’s Watson, which has already been used to create a teaching assistant named Jill Watson at Georgia’s Institute of Technology.
“AI can create insights or reasoning, which will allow a lesser skilled analyst to have a trusted advisor to help them correlate relationships and threats that are happening in the environment in real time,” Spisak says.
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In 10 years, Fisch says, “most of the day-to-day work done by cybersecurity professionals will be done using some form of AI. The size and number of datasets requiring review and action will grow exponentially. As AI continues to mature,” he continues, “so will the cybersecurity profession’s use for it, such as having AI work on more strategic and cybersecurity issues.”