Can AI and Cybersecurity Work Together in the Future?
AI-powered cyberattacks are growing common on social media platforms, particularly Twitter. We constantly hear of political parties accusing each other of spreading “disinformation” about the other party. AI-powered bots are known to inflate follower counts or distort political views. Here’s an example:
Among other concerning trends in cybersecurity, cybercriminals are leveraging AI-powered videos on YouTube to trick individuals in downloading malware. Are you wondering how AI technology is connected to cybersecurity? Let’s first understand each of these terms individually.
Explaining AI
Artificial Intelligence (or AI) can be defined as the “simulation of human intelligence on machines, including computer systems.” Simply put, AI-powered systems can perform human tasks that require cognitive abilities. This includes areas like:
· Understanding human language. Example, customer service chatbots
· Responding to common tasks like playing a requested song. Example, Apple Siri or Amazon Alexa
· Identifying customer’s tastes and preferences and recommending a product. Example, Amazon or Netflix.
Besides the above, AI technology has a host of business use cases such as:
· Detecting frauds in banks and financial institutions.
· Powering self-driving (or autonomous) vehicles.
· Enabling facial recognition in security devices.
· Powering accurate medical diagnosis in the healthcare sector.
Here’s an example of the AI-powered Tesla Model 3:
Explaining Cybersecurity
Simply put, cybersecurity is defined as the practice of securing computers (or computer networks) from cyberattacks and online threats. Why is it important in the business domain? Each year, 71.1 million people are affected by cybercrimes. Forbes estimates that the combined costs of cybercrimes in 2023 is expected to hit $8 trillion – and grow to $10.5 trillion by 2025.
With the growing complexity of cyberattacks, cybersecurity is now a combination of security measures including the following:
· Identity Access Management (IAM) – or the process of identifying and authenticating individuals to access critical resources.
· Enterprise Vulnerability Management (EVM) – or the process of detecting and fixing security-related vulnerabilities in any business application or tool, which hackers can exploit to their advantage.
· Governance Risk & Compliance (GRC) – to ensure that business enterprises comply with prevailing industry regulations about data privacy and security. For example, PCI-DSS regulation in the financial industry secures online payments made using credit cards.
· Managed Detection & Response (MDR) – or the process of how organizations can proactively (or reactively) detect and respond to online threats.
Now that we understand both AI and Cybersecurity, let’s answer the main question – Is AI and Cybersecurity friends or foes?
AI and Cybersecurity – Friends or Foes?
Finally, we come to the main question – Is AI and Cybersecurity friends or foes? Unfortunately, the answer is both.
AI as the Foe
As a foe, AI and machine learning technologies can be leveraged by hackers to:
· Generate new malware variants or strains, which are hard to detect by cybersecurity tools.
· Use AI tools to learn more about online traffic that can circumvent the current online defense mechanisms.
· Monitor the behavior of a target system and develop new malware that can resemble the “regular” traffic.
Additionally, AI technology can be used by hackers to generate deepfakes of targeted individuals. In 2023, we have seen a number of deepfakes targeting celebrities like Rashmi Mandanna – and even BJP politicians like Manoj Tiwari or our prime minister Narendra Modi (doing garba!!).
Hackers are also exploiting security vulnerabilities in “traditional” applications or tools – by launching XSS or SQL injections. They can also leverage AI tools to add new vulnerabilities. For instance, they can create adversarial examples causing applications to respond incorrectly.
AI as the Friend
As a friend, AI technology can enhance cybersecurity in the following ways:
· Detecting and responding to online threats including malware, phishing, and ransomware.
· Complying with the prevailing industry regulations regarding data security and privacy.
· Identifying and analyzing data patterns in network traffic – to constitute what’s “normal” and what is not.
· Recognizing signature patterns in newly released malware variants, which are still not available.
· Improving the overall understanding of the latest developments in cyberattacks.
What’s even more impressive is that as a self-learning technology, AI enables cybersecurity systems to continuously evolve to new types of cyberattacks. This is more advanced than “traditional” cybersecurity solutions that rely on rule-based and signature-monitoring to respond to cyberthreats.
Going forward, AI in cybersecurity can transform areas like:
· Detection of new and existing malware
· Incident response
· Disaster recovery
· Perimeter security
Conclusion
What’s interesting is that the emergence of AI technology has evoked both positive and negative experiences from industry experts. For instance, Stephen Hawking is known to have said that “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of human race.” At the other end of the responses, Jaron Lanier said, “Artificial Intelligence is better understood as a belief system than as a technology.”
As AI technology continues to disrupt “traditional” methods and processes, cybersecurity can leverage AI-powered systems to improve protection from malware variants and online threats.
AI-powered cybersecurity is an emerging career option for young professionals. Some of the job roles in this field include:
· Cybersecurity analysts
· Ethical Hackers
· Cybersecurity delivery managers
· Cybersecurity research and development
Be a part of this revolutionary phase of AI and Cybersecurity, check out the Mastering Gen AI and Cybersecurity course with Tata NeuSkills, designed by Industry Experts to keep you ahead in the era of Artificial Intelligence.
You can also view a free Masterclass by Srimant Acharya, head of Enterprise Vulnerability Management at TCS, where he provides his perspective on understanding AI and cybersecurity. He also talks about career opportunities in the field of AI in cybersecurity.
If you aspire to be a part of the tech evolution, this masterclass or the courses can be your friend to rely on.
Of course it will.
Helpful! This will give a lot of tech career aspirants insights about AI and cybersecurity and where do they want to make a career.