AI, Machine Learning: Not Ready for Prime Time

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have been marketed as game-changing technologies amid the climbing number of breaches, increased prevalence of non-malware attacks and the waning efficacy of legacy antivirus (AV). Yet doubts still persist, especially when they're used in siloes. For now, it appears to be a fledgling space. According to Carbon Black's Behind the Hype report on the subject, nearly two-thirds (64%) of security researchers said they've seen an increase in non-malware attacks since the beginning of 2016; and, the vast majority (93%) of security researchers said non-malware attacks pose more of a business risk than commodity malware attacks. This group of attacks include remote logins (55%); WMI-based attacks (41%); in-memory attacks (39%); PowerShell-based attacks (34%); and attacks leveraging Office macros (31%).