Organizations continue with difficulties in following the rhythm to cybercounts in the middle of the boom in the use of AI, which they use to generate smart malware, automate attacks and improve their precision when attacking. In fact, according to a ProofPoint report, a 52% of the Directors of Administration in Spain see AI as a risk For your organization.
While this change occurs, and cybercounts continue to increase the use they make of AI to improve their attack efficiency, companies must manage complex data on different platforms and meet new regulations. In addition, conventional security methods are no longer enough to anticipate this type of threats.
However, the AI also allows reinforcing the defenses of a company. You can do it through the identification and prevention of attacks, through the analysis of large amounts of data. It can also help predict and even stop them before they occur.
Companies have as allies for automatic learning technologies, predictive analysis and natural language process. In the case of automatic learning, the applications of this technology do not go through a system to perform concrete tasks, but to provide examples to learn from them. Thanks to this, the systems are able to discover common behaviors and use them to make predictions and take future measures when detecting something new, although similar to what you have seen before.
Regarding the predictive analysis, carried out on large data sets can connect points between phenomena that are apparently not related, in addition to discovering behavior patterns and indicating suspicious activities that in other cases can go unnoticed. On the other hand, by understanding and processing human language data, such as emails, it is possible to identify potential threats. Among them the impersonation of identity or social engineering attacks. You can also analyze records and sources of information, and automate answers.
When they use AI, security equipment also improves in efficiency, since it manages to automate repetitive tasks and allows you to gain speed, essential to stop criminals in the climbing of their cyber attacks. Among the tasks that AI manages to automate in security matters are traffic supervision, malware search and record checking. In this way, professionals can devote their time to other more urgent tasks.
In addition to disregarding tasks, thanks to AI, these professionals can use it as a help to manage large volumes of data, detect attacks in real time and prioritize the risk screening between notifications and selecting those that need immediate review by humans.
Of course, although the AI improves the cybersecurity in many ways, it also entails unique challenges and ethical dilemmas. This happens, for example, with the attacks known as “adversaries”, where attackers manipulate the AI systems to fail or steal sensitive data. To defend themselves, it is necessary to perform tests periodically and improve detection methods.
At the same time, if by chance the data from which AI are incomplete or biased, threats can be wrongly identified, or even go unnoticed. To avoid this, it is important to review and continuously evaluate the data. In addition, AI systems must prioritize security and privacy. Especially if they handle confidential data.
Get the balance between threat detection and privacy es Key to get user trust and guarantee compliance with regulations. The decisions that AI make must also be transparent and explainable, since the systems that function as black boxes, when not even experts can understand how they get their conclusions, reduce confidence in this technology.
ProofPoint threat research experts therefore remember that «IA gets cybersecurity to be faster and more efficient: it can analyze data, detect threats and respond in real time, helping organizations to automate tasks to focus on the important thing and go one step ahead of cybercriminals. However, adopting AI is not only to react to threats, but to build a solid and proactive security system. Now is the time to do so and take control of the cybersecurity strategy for the future ”.
