AI or Artificial Intelligence, maybe defined as the Intelligence demonstrated by machines.It is also known as Machine Intelligence. AI was coined by John McCarthy, an American Computer Scientist in 1956. Today it is an umbrella term that comprises everything from robotic process automation to actual robotics.

AI in Cyber Security

The threat landscape and the magnitude of threats are increasing bi-fold. The past few years witnessed attacks like ransomware, data breaches of some top companies etc. Today Cyber Security has become a major priority for every organization. The companies have to invest in resources, continously strengthening controls and measures to detect potential threats and protect against them. So to keep up with the advancing risks the organization need to incorporate advanced tools such as AI which brings in components such as self-learning, self-healing into security concept.
In  cyber security context AI is a software that perceives its environment to identify events and take actions against predefined purpose(to detect threats).

The 2018 CISCO Annual Cyber Security Report suggests that over time AI will be able to learn how to automatically detect unusual pattern in encrypted web traffic and IoT environments since, malware is often communicated within encrypted web traffic and sensitive data content through cloud systems.

AI have already entered into cyber security industry. Barclays Africa is beginning to use AI and machine learning to detect potential threats and to respond to them. Group CSO Kristen Davis said:”As the global threat landscape is advancing quite quickly,both in ability and collaboration on the attacker side,we really must use advanced tools and technologies to get ahead of the threat themselves”.
Daqri,a Los Angeles based company uses AI tools from Vectra networks to monitor traffic from the approximately 1200 devices in its environment.Simon Crosby Co-founder  at Bromium, writes that Machine learning makes it easier to respond to cyber security risks.

AI systems can categorize attacks based on threat level,by incorporating deep ML (Machine Learning) principles into systems. Each threat is responded to in the most effective and proper way.

For the security industry to get the most out of AI, they need to recognize what machines do best and what people do best. Advances in AI can provide new tools for threat hunters, helping them protect new devices and networks even before a threat is classified by a human researcher.