IBM's Watson is going to cybersecurity school

It's no secret that much of the wisdom of the world lies in unstructured data, or the kind that's not necessarily quantifiable and tidy. So it is in cybersecurity, and now IBM is putting Watson to work to make that knowledge more accessible. Towards that end, IBM Security on Tuesday announced a new year-long research project through which it will collaborate with eight universities to help train its Watson artificial-intelligence system to tackle cybercrime. Knowledge about threats is often hidden in unstructured sources such as blogs, research reports and documentation, said Kevin Skapinetz, director of strategy for IBM Security. "Let's say tomorrow there's an article about a new type of malware, then a bunch of follow-up blogs," Skapinetz explained.