How will AI impact Cyber Security in the future

AI has been a subject of great interest in the last five years and we’re slowly seeing how AI-based products are slithering into our day-to-day life. Be it the fact that one person out of every six Americans owns a Smart Speaker or how self-driving cars have started to surface. Giving it a deeper thought gives us an obvious indication how closely we’re dependent on technology and it goes without saying that there would always be organisations or individuals who’d want to take advantage of that reliance—hence, the need of advanced cyber security practices kicks in here.

Understanding the Basic Facets of AI

In all fairness, AI is a powerful tool and the rise of the industry quite evidently tells that. And to understand AI’s impact more closely, we’ve got to understand a few basics of the things related to the subject. Let’s start with Machine Learning. It is the most discussed branch of Artificial Intelligence. Machine learning allows computers (or machines) to learn and adapt through experience — just the way humans do. Another facet of AI is deep learning, which allows machines to be capable of building pattern recognition models instead of relying on humans.

Importance of Cyber security in Today’s Time

In today’s digital world, cyber security is as important as regular security. That means, practising online security like using strong passwords and avoiding innocent-clicks on malware links is as important as locking your door when you go out.

The crux of the matter is that cyber security today is a major concern, not only for an individual’s security or an organisation’s but also for the government. Many sectors of government are trying to incorporate AI into their system to provide better security of data and create more opportunities.

The Bright Side of the Matter

As stated earlier, AI is a powerful tool and if leveraged well, it could provide a great level of sophistication to cyber security industry. There are two important factors here that draw a big line between humans and intelligent machines—speed and automation. If we speak about humans, people in the big data science field have to spend a lot of time analysing the data and getting insights. Machines, on the other hand, could perform the same calculations and provide insights in a matter of moments.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that machines would make data science jobs or data science courses obsolete in the future. Learning data science would always be important as Machine Learning (ML) highly relies on that.

Coming back to the topic, let’s talk about automation. Automation gives organisations the weapon to automate threat detection and eliminate it without human interference. AI could simplify complex processes and incorporates a more sophisticated and robust model for the cyber security. Data deception is another aspect that hints to a more secure future. With the aforementioned technology, we can detect analyse and defend against attackers by predicting and tricking them.

As article a fantastic article about the role of AI in cyber security in Forbes suggests, when we combine ML with application isolation, we get a rock-solid foundation of malware detection that eliminates the breach and puts an end to the movement of malware with the promise of no data compromised.

Another area that would thrive by the aid of AI in the future would be authenticity detection and password protection. Passwords are vulnerable and in the world of rising social engineering practices, the future demands a safer alternative. Hence, AI would be used in the detection of fingerprints, retina scans, etc. — indeed, much safe than the former.

But there’s another side of this coin which is fairly daunting.

Challenges in the Future Where AI Meets Cyber security

With great power comes great responsibility and with AI being a powerful tool, it exacts responsible use. Although, in an ideal world—which we’re far away from—there wouldn’t have been a need of AI to implement security. But, as reality suggests, the cyber attacks have grown more complex with time. The year 2016 encountered the detection of 357 million malware that ripped a lot of businesses into shreds.

So, attackers on the contrary, also use AI in the non-ethical way to break into systems by the use of automated attacks that could be very elusive to defend. AI enables a profound analysis of the victims by analysing their online behaviour and predicted wealth. As predictive models could tell a lot about a person’s willingness to make an online transaction, you could estimate how fearful the scenario could be.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, AI provides a great layer of sophistication to Cyber security in the future. However, it also makes the life of people in the industry of data science jobs, big data science or individuals planning to pursue data science courses for the future, even more challenging.