With the midterm elections just weeks away, the political vitriol and rhetoric are about to heat up. One Arizona State University professor thinks most of the hyperbolic chatter will come from malicious bots spreading racism and hate on social media and in the comments section on news sites. Victor Benjamin, assistant professor of information systems at the W. P. Carey School of Business, has been researching this phenomenon for years. He says the next generation of AI is a reflection of what's going on in society. Benjamin says that as AI learning becomes increasingly dependent on public data sets, such as online conversations, it is vulnerable to influence from cyber adversaries injecting disinformation and social discord. They are swaying public opinion on issues such as presidential elections, public health and social tensions.

Fortinet has unveiled predictions from the FortiGuard Labs team about the threat landscape for 2020 and beyond. These predictions reveal methods that Fortinet anticipates cybercriminals will employ in the near future, along with important strategies that will help organizations protect against these oncoming attacks. Changing the Trajectory of Cyberattacks Cyberattack methodologies have become more sophisticated in recent years magnifying their effectiveness and speed. This trend looks likely to continue unless more organizations make a shift as to how they think about their security strategies. With the volume, velocity, and sophistication of today's global threat landscape, organizations must be able to respond in real time at machine speed to effectively counter aggressive attacks.

Bangalore, India – November 25, 2019- Michael Joseph, Director System Engineering, India & SAARC, Fortinet "Much of the success of cyber adversaries has been due to the ability to take advantage of the expanding attack surface and the resulting security gaps due to digital transformation. Most recently, their attack methodologies have become more sophisticated by integrating the precursors of AI and swarm technology. Luckily, this trajectory is about to shift, if more organizations use the same sorts of strategies to defend their networks that criminals are using to target them. This requires a unified approach that is broad, integrated, and automated to enable protection and visibility across network segments as well as various edges, from IoT to dynamic-clouds." Fortinet, a global leader in broad, integrated, and automated cybersecurity solutions, today unveiled predictions from the FortiGuard Labs team about the threat landscape for 2020 and beyond.

With cybercriminals are taking less and less time to break into corporate systems, Asia-Pacific enterprises will have look to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools to better combat threats and bolster their network resilience. Businesses also need to ensure data access is given only when user identities have been authenticated and based on predetermined conditions. It is not a matter of "if" but "when" now an often-cited adage to indicate the inevitability of security breaches, companies need to think about how they can use speed to defend themselves against attacks. Majority of consumers in Asia-Pacific already own at least one Internet of Things (IoT) device and plan to buy more, but 81 percent fear their personal data is being leaked and 71 percent worry about being monitored without their consent. This was increasingly important as the amount of time cyber adversaries took to break into and move laterally within a network was narrowing, said CrowdStrike's co-founder and CEO George Kurtz, speaking at the GovWare conference in Singapore this week.

As organization go through digital transformation the cyber challenges they face become more important. Their IT systems and applications become more critical and at the same time more open. The recent data breach suffered by British Airways illustrates the sophistication of the cyber adversaries and the difficulties faced by organization to prevent, detect and respond to these challenges. One approach that is gaining ground is the application of AI technologies to cyber security and, at an event in London on September 24th, IBM described how IBM Watson is being integrated with other IBM security products to meet these challenges. The current approaches to cyber defence include multiple layers of protection including firewalls and identity and access management as well as event monitoring (SIEM).