One of the most common refrains about fighting in cyber space is that the offense has the advantage over the defense: The offense only needs to be successful once, while the defense needs to be perfect all the time. Even though this has always been a bit of an exaggeration, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to dramatically improve cyber defense to help right the offense-defense balance in cyber space.

The vast majority of IT decision makers appear to believe the hype surrounding artificial intelligence as a means to enhance cybersecurity. An ESET poll of 900 IT leaders in the US, UK and Germany found a disappointing 75% believe AI is a'silver bullet' to helping them counter online threats. Respondents from the US (82%) were much more willing to believe the hype than their counterparts in the UK (67%) and Germany (66%). Most of those polled claimed that AI and machine learning would help their organization to detect and respond to threats faster (79%) and help solve skills shortages (77%). There's certainly evidence to suggest that the emerging technology can help IT teams in this way -- by spotting patterns indicative of a threat more quickly than human eyes could, and automating detections to take the strain off stretched cybersecurity teams.