What KInd Of Transformation You Should Expect From AI in Near Future!
Although the artificial mind appeared in the distant 50’s, to this day it is one of the most discussed, interesting and controversial technologies in the whole world.
Artificial intelligence is a universal term that describes a set of technologies that allow a computer to perform various functions like a human, for example:
- Processing and storing text
- Processing natural language
- Computer vision.
Machine learning is a class of methods of artificial intelligence, the characteristic feature of which is not a direct solution of the problem, but training in the process of applying solutions to a set of similar tasks. Those. the idea is that the more data the machine collects, the smarter it becomes.
For consumers, the most famous and applicable examples of using artificial intelligence are chat rooms like Alexa from Amazon or Siri from Apple. Entrepreneurs and corporations, in turn, are more interested in the question of how artificial intelligence software can help in closing “holes” such as fraud or cyber attacks, and in optimizing enterprise productivity, for example, improving the quality of customer service.
The American company Narrative Science in its studies found that 38% of corporations already use artificial intelligence technologies, and by mid-2018 their number will grow to 62%. The international analytical agency Forrester Research predicted that the growth of investments in artificial intelligence technologies from this year will increase by 300% with each subsequent year.
Security
Information security companies also want to snatch a tidbit of new technologies and that’s not surprising, given the fact that the number of malicious programs and hackers is increasing with progression.
Due to its ability to learn through the filtering of many examples of behavior in various situations, analyzing a huge amount of data, Artificial Intelligence can help the heads of information security departments find “unknown” security threats, automate responses from the Operations Management Center, and improve recovery from attacks. In short, with highly qualified personnel (which is very hard to find), Artificial intelligence can fill, of course, not all, but most of the gaps in the IT field.
- Experts have long been calling for the creation of an intelligent, autonomous security system, and Artificial Intelligence, according to Bruce Schneier’s cryptographer, can be a great help in this task. However, according to the technical director of Resilient Systems (a company specializing in protection from cyber attacks), the hype surrounding security is too bloated. According to him, it is still impossible to replace people with artificial intelligence, because employees are needed to provide full-scale protection. But of course there is interest in artificial intelligence technologies, as it is capable of increasing mental activity, and, consequently, the ideal solution will be the application of human resources and new technologies together.
Futurist and author of the book “Robot Come” Martin Ford said that both “good” hackers and “bad” are already using technologies based on a deep study of neural networks. He also fears that cyber-crooks already go one step ahead in some cases and use bots and automatic attacks. This means that every day criminals are becoming more sophisticated.
- Artificial intelligence will increasingly become valuable for detecting attacks and quickly reacting to them in order to protect the system. Unfortunately, many organizations still use completely manual labor, but this approach will have to be changed to keep the systems safe. And many heads of information security departments are already on the way to this.
The head of IT company Intertek Dane Warren said that the rules of the game have completely changed: thanks to increased automation, control mechanisms, robotics and intelligent IT agents, the industry expects a wider development of both offensive and defensive capabilities. He also added that these improvements include a faster response to security events, better data analysis, and “the use of statistical models for better forecasting or behavior planning.”
- Andy Rose, IT Director at NATS, also noted the benefits. According to him, security has always needed sophisticated processes to detect a particular “hole” among a huge amount of data, for example, to find and stop the flow of spam or a data leakage channel. People interact with a huge amount of data, which causes great difficulties, and artificial intelligence can be an ideal solution for speeding up and automating the detection of problems in security systems.
Security service providers are constantly evolving and improving due to constantly changing threats and their varieties, and the technologies of artificial intelligence are not lagging behind them.
However, technologies usually change faster than service providers, initial development quickly emerged with new solutions based on artificial intelligence to improve the effectiveness of the Operations Management Center, risk assessment and optimize the detection of network traffic anomalies.
- Such newcomers as Titanium, Cylance, and LogRhythm have already jumped into this cyberspace, but such start-ups as Darktrace, Harvest.AI, patterns, and StatusToday have also attracted attention.
Giant corporations also do not stand aside and use artificial intelligence in the field of security. For example, Google engineers are working on an artificial intelligence system that will create its own encryption, thereby replacing completely traditional captcha. IBM launched Watson technology, Amazon acquired Harvest.AI – both systems use algorithms to identify important documents and IP, and then analyze user behavior to identify possible hacker attacks.
- At the moment, these technologies are rudimentary and focused mainly on data analysis, threat detection and reconstruction assistance under the guidance of an employee. But in the future, artificial intelligence will be able to automate the operational control center to work in the 24×7 mode and will allow employees to focus on the continuity of business processes and solving critical problems. Artificial intelligence can function as an assistant in many processes – at a sufficiently high level in analytics, and also at a professional level in the security field.
PatternEx Chief Research Officer Ignacio Arnaldo believes that artificial intelligence will allow information security managers to reach a new level. According to him, security personnel are well aware of the problems and recognize the need for tools that will improve the effectiveness of operational management. Artificial intelligence can do this, but blindly trusting technology managers are not yet ready, they need proof that the artificial mind will far surpass human efficiency.
The Basics of everything
Many still think that we are running ahead. So while artificial intelligence is just a luxury, because we are still living in the era when many companies do not conduct regular patch management.
At the RSA conference this year, experts in cryptography discussed how to use artificial intelligence in the field of security, how to train a machine and what is the role of a person in all this action. Attention was also paid to such issues as reliability and possible faultiness of the machine, and some participants expressed the opinion that it is extremely strange to see how safety in its basic concept, compared with the technologies of artificial intelligence, takes second place.
- Andy Rose voiced his position, emphasizing that security professionals must constantly improve and revise the foundations of this sphere – general principles and approaches, patching, SDLP, etc., otherwise the artificial intelligence technology will turn into a program that will tell you about a lot of violations in the processes that have already happened and you did not prevent them.
Bruce Schneier has a slightly different position. He believes that security can be improved with the help of artificial intelligence, but this technology should only be applied to those companies that already have well-established safety and customized processes and are ready to implement the data provided by the machine. The established principles and norms, he said, are only an obstacle to full automation, and he does not care what tools are used by “black” hackers or supervisory agencies.
- A completely opposite opinion was expressed by Ford, he believes that there is a real threat to the world. Artificial intelligence will be a big danger in the near and medium term because paying so much attention to the futuristic idea of how machines with super intelligence will completely replace a person, we forget that impure people will also have unlimited opportunities with these technologies.
Warren agrees that there will be many obstacles to the implementation of the technology that will need to be overcome by security executives because this is the technology of the future and it requires visionary thinking, while many organizations are still “floundering in the basics”. The expensive rewriting of applications and programs, the introduction of new threats – these are just some of the problems that we will face with the introduction of artificial intelligence. Therefore, everything must be balanced, otherwise, we will reach a point where the surrounding reality and technology will no longer keep pace.
Artificial intelligence is not a panacea
Artificial intelligence and security are not necessary to be together and separate as well. Vectra security chief Guenter Olman in his article in early 2017 noticed that many do not see the difference between automated security and security technologies based on artificial intelligence. And this first of all shows how dangerous it is for security personnel to buy solutions that they do not even need, not to mention the further application of technology standards, quality control, and management.
PatternEx Chief Research Officer Ignacio Arnaldo notes that security based on artificial intelligence technology is not a panacea. First, some attacks are very difficult to catch, because in one taken organization there is a wide range of attacks in different time ranges and in different data sources. Secondly, the nature of the attacks is constantly changing. Therefore, the biggest challenge is the constant training of artificial intelligence.
Palmer, for his part, also adds notes of criticism, pointing out that most of the touted technologies of machine learning are not really self-taught, standing in the battle of the client. Instead, they are trained on samples of malware in the vendor cloud and downloaded to the client, for example, as anti-virus signatures. This approach is not particularly progressive in terms of customer safety and remains fundamentally retarded.
And how soon will we see the applications of the newest security technologies?
It must first be understood that most intrusion prevention systems (IPS) are in IDS mode, i.e. in the mode of intrusion detection. And this is because companies lack the confidence to rely 100% on intelligent systems to automate the selection and uncontrolled changes in their core infrastructure. Rose notes that there are fears that such control without context can seriously damage the entire service, and this poses a huge threat. But we also need to understand that if we do not use artificial intelligence to improve and modernize security systems, then this technology will be accurately developed for its own purposes by “bad guys”, and this will already be a worse problem.
Palmer is absolutely sure of one thing – automation and ease of use are the only ways that can improve safety, and artificial intelligence will definitely take a significant share in this area.
