Since the advent of computing, security has been the focal point of IT in enterprises. The scenario hasn’t changed a bit now; rather the threats are growing sophisticated day by day. The complexity of this scenario is evident from the fact that many enterprises currently have a dedicated Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), in addition to a CIO. A silver line in the cloud, however, is that latest innovations in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related fields have opened up a new set of discussions around IT security.
Forrester in its latest report identifies four ways security professionals can use pragmatic AI in IT security:
- Analyze massive volumes of data
- Address the cybersecurity skills gap
- Constantly adapt to evolving threats and attack patterns
- Limit the customer and business impact of cyberattacks and breaches
AI and Data Analytics
Dealing with big data has been a big challenge, especially in terms of security. AI may be helpful in two ways: (1) Extract the security related events from the massive pool of data and send them for remediation (2) Identify the vulnerabilities before they affect the network.
With data analytics transforming the enterprise operations, the role of AI in data analytics and security is set to grow further. Be it operations, finance, marketing and sales, big data has become the fulcrum that lets the business move on smoothly. With machine intelligence, data analytics can happen at lightning speed, resulting in faster decision making and remediation. AI will help security team act promptly on alerts and anomalous activities.
AI to address security skill gap
Organizations have always faced challenges in addressing the security skill gap thanks to the explosive growth of data happening around all industry verticals. Forrester reveals that by 2021 there will be between 1.5 million and 3.5 million open positions in cyber security. While the dearth of qualified security professional is a major cause of concern for enterprises, the investment required to support the growing employee base is an offshoot of this transformation. With AI, the enterprise can enhance the skill set of their current workforce and empower them to do more with less.
AI to help enterprises adapt to new threats
Apart from prevention and remediation tactics, organizations need to learn to adapt to the evolving threats and attack patterns so they can proactively address many challenges in the current threat scenario. With AI, enterprises can augment current security rules or signature-based solutions, and in some cases replace them, says Forrester.
AI to limit the impact of security breaches
Limiting the impact of security breach is part of the disaster management strategies, and AI can be used in executing this in an efficient manner. In the event of a security mishap, AI can use the machine intelligence to analyze which tactics worked the best in the previous occurrences and trigger actions in the similar line.
Rajani Baburajan
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