Written by Michael McKinnon, CIO, Tesserent. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have given cybercriminals new tools that elevate the chance of successful cyber attacks. Advancements in AI enable cyber criminals to create increasingly sophisticated and harder-to-detect social engineering attacks. Governments and businesses need to be aware of these risks and must take steps now to mitigate them. Global socioeconomic differences have encouraged the creation of Internet scammers and con artists seeking to escape poverty.

The University of Adelaide and MTX Group have entered into a research collaboration to develop new insights in machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). Bringing together their academic research and commercial expertise and experience, the two organisations will undertake specific, outcomes-focussed research. They will use AI to model uncertainty with a view to avoiding failure within systems that may be used in defence and business environments. The University and MTX Group have jointly been awarded $100,000 under the Artificial Intelligence for Decision Making Initiative which is a collaborative project between the Australian Government's Office of National Intelligence (ONI) and the Defence Science and Technology Group (DST). Dr Duong Nguyen and Dr George Stamatescu from the University's School of Computer Science will work alongside Dr Ammar Mohemmed from MTX Group.

Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and deep learning (DL) are often applied in cybersecurity, but their applications may not always work as intended. ISACA's new publication, AI Uses in Blue Team Security, looks at AI, ML and DL applications in cybersecurity to determine what is working, what is not, what looks encouraging for the future and what may be more hype than substance. Leveraging interviews with some of the engineers behind these technologies, firsthand examination and use of some of the related products, and observations of chief information security officers (CISOs) and chief information officers (CIOs), AI Uses in Blue Team Security seeks to determine whether marketing tactics obscure reality when it comes to new security technology. Of the 13 engineers who commented for this publication, none felt that the marketing associated with the products they were working on was completely accurate with respect to advertised capabilities. However, the engineers were optimistic about the direction they were heading and the technologies they would be creating as they relate to ML and DL.