BotNet News

Artificial intelligence is being used by attackers to create more sophisticated malware, evade detection and exploit vulnerabilities. Defenders need to incorporate AI into their tools, technologies and processes to stop these advanced attacks and minimize cyber security risks.

AI-powered solutions can automate tasks that are highly repetitive, manually-intensive, or tedious for cybersecurity analysts and other experts to complete. This frees up their time and resources so they can focus on more complex security tasks like policymaking.

For example, an AI solution can automatically scan vast amounts of data to detect suspicious activity and flag it for investigation by security analysts. This reduces the risk of false positives so teams can spend more time responding to actual threats—such as a ransomware attack—that could be impacting business operations.

AI can also help organizations improve data protection by classifying sensitive information and monitoring its movement to prevent unauthorized access or exfiltration. This includes implementing encryption and tokenization processes to safeguard data at rest or in transit. It can also optimize security policies for maximum effectiveness and work around the clock to monitor and alert on new threats, so teams can react quickly.

However, just like any tool, it can be abused by threat actors. For example, an attacker could poison or manipulate an AI model’s training data to change its results, leading to unexpected or malicious outcomes. This is known as adversarial training, which can be employed by state-sponsored threat actors or run-of-the-mill computer hackers alike.