40
AI on the
Frontline of Cyber Threats
In the annals of cyber warfare , the ability to use machine learning to detect and thwart threat actors will go down as a watershed event .
BY RUSS BANHAM
With a huge magnitude of data flowing across the network and an equal magnitude of threats to scour for , security experts shoulder the burden of hunting for anomalies that could indicate the presence of an outsider .
But not everything that looks suspicious actually is suspicious . Compounding security experts ’ already daunting challenge of monitoring thousands of malware variants and malicious URLs is that traditional intrusion detection systems often aim the searchlights at too many potential suspects . ( For example , the employee who is on the network to print birthday invitations late at night .)
“ Just because a behavior is anomalous doesn ’ t mean it ’ s malicious , but at least a security analyst can gain more evidence to this effect ,” explains Jon Ramsey , chief technology officer at Secureworks , an information security services provider that protects customer networks , computers , and information assets . In other words , machine learning narrows the field to the most likely threats . “ Now a more in-depth investigation can begin .”
ILLUSTRATIONS BY KEITH NEGLEY
DELL TECHNOLOGIES | REALIZE