AI for Cybersecurity Shimmers With Promise, but Challenges Abound

Companies are quickly adopting cybersecurity products and systems that incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, but the technology comes with significant challenges, and it can't replace human analysts, experts say. In a Wakefield Research survey published this week, for example, almost half of IT security professionals (46%) said their AI-based systems create too many false positives to handle, 44% complained that critical events are not properly flagged, and 41% do not know what to do with AI outputs. In total, 89% of companies reported challenges with cybersecurity solutions that claimed to have AI capabilities. Not all AI-based projects are created equal, as some technology is more mature, says Gunter Ollmann, chief security officer at Devo, which sponsored the survey. "When they talk about rolling out AI for cybersecurity ... those are the projects that are commonly failing," he says.