The compelling case for AI in cyber security

Enterprise buyers are on track to spend more on, and further leverage, cyber security tools that employ artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to combat digital threats, according to new research by Cisco. The vendor's 2018 Annual Cybersecurity Report suggests that the accelerating uptake of AI and machine learning in the security space can be attributed to efforts to reduce attackers' time to operate as they begin to weaponise cloud services and evade detection through encryption, used as a tool to conceal command-and-control activity. The research informing the report involved more than 3,600 respondents across 26 countries, with chief information security officers (CISOs) and security operations (SecOps) managers in several countries and at organisations of various sizes asked about their security resources and procedures. According to Cisco, while encryption is meant to enhance security, the expanded volume of encrypted web traffic – both legitimate and malicious – has also created greater challenges for cyber security professionals trying to identify and monitor potential threats. Indeed, Cisco threat researchers claim to have observed more than a threefold increase in encrypted network communication used by inspected malware samples over a year. The vendor suggested that machine learning technology that can, over time, effectively learn how to automatically detect unusual patterns in encrypted web traffic, cloud, and IoT environments, can help to enhance network security defences.