AI Security: Is Your AI Really Strong Enough Against Hackers?
AI technologies are used in various applications, and security software is not an exception. In fact, according to the Capgemini Research Institute’s report, the use of AI security applications is going to rise as two out of three organizations said that they plan on switching to AI security tools in 2020. Why are so many companies shifting to these tools? That is because they are proven to be extremely effective in preventing cyber attacks like data breaches that can ruin an organization’s reputation and cause financial losses. The question is whether using such software is enough to prevent data breaches and other cyber attacks? If you are searching for an answer to this question, we encourage you to read our full blog post. We also explain what AI or Artificial Intelligence is and what AI security is. If you have any questions after reading our blog post, we encourage you to leave us a message in our comments section.
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What is AI?
AI or Artificial Intelligence is intelligence possessed by a program. What can an intelligent application do? It can study its environment and learn how to achieve the goals that it was programmed to reach. In other words, tools that have AI technologies can mimic human behavior like learning and problem solving. Thus, as you can imagine, AI technologies can be useful in many areas for creating various types of software. For example, you can come across AI technologies when playing strategic games like chess when you have to defeat the computer. Smart home assistants like Alexa or Siri also use AI technologies that allow them to recognize human speech. If you are driving a Tesla, you are again using AI technologies as they make it possible for the car to provide the self-driving feature.
What is AI security?
The earlier mentioned report also revealed that over 60 percent of respondents believe that they cannot prevent cyber attacks without the use of AI security tools. So, what is AI security, and what is so special about it? AI security is a software that employs AI technologies that, as said earlier, allow tools to observe and learn to prevent cyber attacks. As a result, AI security applications can observe program behavior and tell the difference between good and bad actions. Programs with AI technologies do so by comparing the behaviors of tools that run in the same or similar environment. The best part is that unlike traditional cybersecurity tools that do not use AI technologies, AI security tools can detect bad behavior without human intervention. Specialists also say that using AI technologies may help researchers save time while hunting for new threats as AI security tools can discover them faster.
Should we trust AI technologies to take care of our cyber security?
While security tools that use AI technologies can notice suspicious or malicious behavior and prevent cyber attacks, it does not mean that they can provide complete security. Like any other software, programs with AI technologies can have vulnerabilities. Not to mention, cybercriminals can employ AI technologies to bypass AI security tools. For example, they can use Adversarial AI to feed the application that hackers are trying to bypass with wrong information to disguise malicious activities. Thus, no matter how powerful AI security tools can be, it does not mean that they alone are enough to ensure cyber security.
Therefore, those who wish to avoid cyber attacks should take some responsibility themselves. If you are a home user, we recommend staying away from shady content on the Internet, ensuring that your programs are up to date, following cybersecurity news, and, of course, using strong passwords. Keep in mind that if you cannot come up with unique combinations for all your accounts that you would be able to memorize, you can employ a password manager like Cyclonis Password Manager that would do this for you. Cyclonis can generate passwords from chosen characters that can be up to 32 characters. The application also keeps them safe in an encrypted vault and can log you into your accounts automatically. You can learn more about it if you continue reading here.
If you are responsible for an organization's cyber security, we would like to remind you that many cyber attacks happen due to human error. Thus, no matter how well a company protects its systems with security tools, it might still be unable to avoid cyber attacks if its employees do not know how to recognize threats or use the security tools that they might have at hand. In other words, we highly recommend educating employees on cyber security regularly so that they would know about the latest threats and be ready to avoid them.
To conclude, while AI security tools might prevent various cyber attacks, it does not mean that companies should solely rely on them. That being said, we do not mean to discourage from using such software either. Employing the best security tools that you can currently get your hands on is always smart. We only recommend making sure that you do everything within your power as well if you want to minimize your chances of becoming a victim of a cyber attack.
