AI, machine learning new tools to fight cyber attacks

Cyber security companies are turning to artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to ward off growing number of attacks on networks, Finland-based internet security firm F-Secure said. As the world is fast moving towards Internet of Things and connected devices, deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) has become inevitable for cyber security firms to analyse huge amount of data to save networks from infiltration attempts, F-Secure's Security Advisor Sean Sullivan said. Networks are persistently exposed to threats like malware, phishing, password breaches and denial of service attacks. On a daily basis, F-Secure Labs on an average receives sample data of 500,000 files from its customers that include 10,000 malware variants and 60,000 malicious URLs for analysis and protection, Sullivan said. For humans, it is a big task to go through such huge amount of data and machine learning tools and AI are lending a helping hand at this stage, he said.