Artificial Intelligence (AI) is creating a new frontline in information security. Systems that independently learn, reason and act will increasingly replicate human behavior. Like humans, they will be flawed, but also capable of achieving great things.

AI poses new information risks and makes some existing ones more dangerous. However, it can also be used for good and should become a key part of every organization’s defensive arsenal. Business and information security leaders alike must understand both the risks and opportunities before embracing technologies that will soon become a critically important part of everyday business.

Already, AI is finding its way into many mainstream business use cases. Organizations use variations of AI to support processes in areas including customer service, human resources, and bank fraud detection. However, the hype can lead to confusion and skepticism over what AI actually is and what it really means for business and security. It is difficult to separate wishful thinking from reality.

What Are the Information Risks Posed by AI?

As AI systems are adopted by organizations, they will become increasingly critical to day-to-day business operations. Some organizations already have, or will have, business models entirely dependent on AI technology. No matter the function for which an organization uses AI, such systems and the information that supports them have inherent vulnerabilities and are at risk from both accidental and adversarial threats. Compromised AI systems make poor decisions and produce unexpected outcomes.

Simultaneously, organizations are beginning to face sophisticated AI-enabled attacks – which have the potential to compromise information and cause severe business impact at a greater speed and scale than ever before. Taking steps both to secure internal AI systems and defend against external AI-enabled threats will become vitally important in reducing information risk.

While AI systems adopted by organizations present a tempting target, adversarial attackers are also beginning to use AI for their own purposes. AI is a powerful tool that can be used to enhance attack techniques or even create entirely new ones. Organizations must be ready to adapt their defenses in order to cope with the scale and sophistication of AI-enabled cyberattacks.

Defensive Opportunities Provided by AI

Security practitioners are always fighting to keep up with the methods used by attackers, and AI systems can provide at least a short-term boost by significantly enhancing a variety of defensive mechanisms. AI can automate numerous tasks, helping understaffed security departments to bridge the specialist skills gap and improve the efficiency of their human practitioners. Protecting against many existing threats, AI can put defenders a step ahead. However, adversaries are not standing still – as AI-enabled threats become more sophisticated, security practitioners will need to use AI-supported defenses simply to keep up.

The benefit of AI in terms of response to threats is that it can act independently, taking responsive measures without the need for human oversight and at a much greater speed than a human could. Given the presence of malware that can compromise whole systems almost instantaneously, this is a highly valuable capability.

The number of ways in which defensive mechanisms can be significantly enhanced by AI provide grounds for optimism, but as with any new type of technology, it is not a miracle cure. Security practitioners should be aware of the practical challenges involved when deploying defensive AI.

Questions and considerations before deploying defensive AI systems have narrow intelligence and are designed to fulfill one type of task. They require sufficient data and inputs in order to complete that task. One single defensive AI system will not be able to enhance all the defensive mechanisms outlined previously – an organization is likely to adopt multiple systems. Before purchasing and deploying defensive AI, security leaders should consider whether an AI system is required to solve the problem, or whether more conventional options would do a similar or better job.

Questions to ask include:

• Is the problem bounded? (i.e. can it be addressed with one dataset or type of input, or does it require a high understanding of context, which humans are usually better at providing?)
• Does the organization have the data required to run and optimize the AI system?

Security leaders also need to consider issues of governance around defensive AI, such as:

• How do defensive AI systems fit into organizational security governance structures?
• How can the organization provide security assurance for defensive AI systems?
• How can defensive AI systems be maintained, backed up, tested and patched?
• Does the organization have sufficiently skilled people to provide oversight for defensive AI systems?

AI will not replace the need for skilled security practitioners with technical expertise and an intuitive nose for risk. These security practitioners need to balance the need for human oversight with the confidence to allow AI-supported controls to act autonomously and effectively. Such confidence will take time to develop, especially as stories continue to emerge of AI proving unreliable or making poor or unexpected decisions.

AI systems will make mistakes – a beneficial aspect of human oversight is that human practitioners can provide feedback when things go wrong and incorporate it into the AI’s decision-making process. Of course, humans make mistakes too – organizations that adopt defensive AI need to devote time, training and support to help security practitioners learn to work with intelligent systems.

Given time to develop and learn together, the combination of Human and Artificial Intelligence should become a valuable component of an organization’s cyber defenses.

Planning for the Future Begins Now

Computer systems that can independently learn, reason and act herald a new technological era, full of both risk and opportunity. The advances already on display are only the tip of the iceberg – there is a lot more to come. The speed and scale at which AI systems ‘think’ will be increased by growing access to big data, greater computing power and continuous refinement of programming techniques. Such power will have the potential to both make and destroy a business.

AI tools and techniques that can be used in defense are also available to malicious actors including criminals, hacktivists and state-sponsored groups. Sooner rather than later these adversaries will find ways to use AI to create completely new threats such as intelligent malware – and at that point, defensive AI will not just be a ‘nice to have’. It will be a necessity. Security practitioners using traditional controls will not be able to cope with the speed, volume, and sophistication of attacks.

To thrive in the new era, organizations need to reduce the risks posed by AI and make the most of the opportunities it offers. That means securing their own intelligent systems and deploying their own intelligent defenses. AI is no longer a vision of the distant future: the time to start preparing is now.

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The technologies are introducing new trends every day. And artificial technology (AI) is one of the emerging products, which already has made the enterprises excited. AI promises to be an effective way of performing routine tasks and can be applied to the various sectors of economies and businesses. Today many industries are adopting and depending on it for their mundane and advanced operations. Following are some of the ways that AI elevates the enterprises and businesses:

Improving customer service: Nowadays enterprises are using AI to increase customer engagement and satisfaction.  AI-enabled chatbots provide financial guidance for the organizations’ clients through voice and text messages. Clients can access services at any time as chatbots are able to provide services 24/7. Customers do not need to hire customer service personnel as chatbots can perform the day-to-day transaction.

Enhancing online security: Online threats make it difficult for enterprises to stay ahead as the threats keep changing. Cyber attacks and security breaches in the companies sometimes result in the loss of crucial data. AI is able to make safe them from the threats and attacks. It can detect malware and provide with solutions to the attacks.

Aiding with better financial decisions: Financial decision-making is one of the crucial elements that can determine the success or downfall of businesses. AI-tool, the predictive analysis helps companies by giving insights about the decisions, patterning data. This leads companies with having a better observation of the decisions.

Making better inventory management: Inventory management comes with a range of daunting activities. Companies need to update the inventory, stock the shelves and accurately track everything within the business. AI technology helps to improve this management by allowing businesses to apply predictive analysis. Businesses are able to access crucial information on factors-driving demands and establish future demands that possibly hit the market.

Businesses can take the leverage of AI and its associated technologies as deep learning, predictive analysis, and machine learning to appear as a distinguished one in the ever-growing competition.

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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.

Machine learning can be used to train logic designed to detect suspiciousness based on the structure of a file or its behaviour or both, another Security Advisor Andy Patel said.

Sullivan said any abnormal behaviour of a file is flagged by AI which helps in detecting threats at an early stage without much damage being done to the network.

Patel claimed behaviour models enable them to take preemptive steps to save their customers from ransomware attacks like ‘Locky’.

When asked if machine tools and AI can make people’s jobs in cyber security redundant, Patel said it is unlikely as attacks through malwares are designed by humans who think creatively to bypass automated security solutions. So, there is need of humans who can think creatively to defend networks from such attacks.

He also said AI and machine learning are at an evolving stage and there is a long way to go for widespread adoption of such tools in cyber security as only big players at present can afford building such systems and improving them every day.

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Ever since its introduction as an academic discipline back in the 50s, AI has led to a combination of disappointment and optimism.

In fact, technological options that were conveyed as impossible, such as optical character recognition, are, presently, run-of-the-mill. While other technologies are yet to be mastered, such as autonomous cars, AI is an excellent tool that can be used in the business realm. In fact, it has already started.

Whether we’re discussing direct or indirect AI adaptations, this promising technology is bound to change everything we do. That being said, let’s have a look at what is expected to happen.

Enabling Wholly Autonomous Processes

Even though most AI technologies would still require human supervision and intervention, this may change. Companies aim at developing technology that duplicates human cognitive capabilities. That would enable AI systems to be fully trusted in the case of autonomous processes.

In fact, AI solutions are expected to cope with intricate problems in transportation, energy and medicine. We could anticipate seeing AI technologies that can parallel the speed and cognitive ability of humans.

That’s why many analysts, including Bill Gates, are distressed regarding the fact that artificial intelligence systems will take over the majority of jobs. According to a studyby Oxford University from 2013, AI is expected to take over no less than half the jobs in the United States.

In fact, no less than 702 occupations will inevitably be affected by automation. While other jobs will spring, the working realm will dramatically change. People ought to find vocations that require cognitive complex tasks that couldn’t be completed by robots. Evidently, such positions would necessitate more schooling, which would result in a race between education and technology.

Revolutionize Time Management

Without a doubt, timing is a key element that could decide a company’s success or failure and can make a difference between a firm’s success and failure in 42 percent of the cases. It comes as no surprise that companies are eager to incorporate artificial intelligence based scheduling software.

Such software can assist companies in making precise predictions according to available emerging and historical information. Small businesses, as well, shouldn’t ignore the sector of artificial intelligence, and how it could help them develop. It would be best for each entrepreneur to brainstorm the potential benefits AI could help maximize the company’s productivity level.

Increased Efficiency and Precision at Low Costs

With the assistance of AI software, the margin of mistake and error that determine companies to lose money would be dramatically reduced. Therefore, eliminating human error would result in a higher efficiency and precision, without the risk of financial losses. The fact is that machines work much faster than humans, and they don’t require regular wages.

Automated Lead Generation

The expenses linked to costumer acquisition through lead generation are important for every company. Also, this implies extensive trial, error and exploration of various channels before pinpointing the right solution.

AI has the potential of changing that altogether and may increase the relevance of these campaigns, thus reducing costs. Technology can accomplish that by automating and learning from mere users.

In simplest words, what would require a sales associate weeks of work and research, a robot could accomplish in a couple of hours or days.

Prediction of Human Behavior

AI algorithms have the capability of pinpointing patterns in the elements that affect humans in the decision making process. Such algorithms can offer critical guidelines, by offering information on potential outcomes. Even today, one can use apps that analyze store deals and user behaviors.

Detection of Cybersecurity Issues

You might already know that the incidence of cyber attacks over the last years has been increasing and has everyone from small business owners to the government concerned.

In this respect, artificial intelligence holds outstanding promises in learning patterns of devices, networks, and systems and in decoding them. This could offer valuable information regarding in-progress attacks. As a matter of fact, more and more startups are eager to incorporate such software to obtain unprecedented levels of cybersecurity.

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On Sunday Oracle announced the launch of its new, highly autonomous database, but the vendor didn’t leave it there. Two days on, during its massive OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, the company revealed the development of a supporting, highly-automated cyber defence service.

This service has been designed to work together with the autonomous Oracle 18c database to help mitigate costly cyber-attacks and data theft.

As described by Larry Ellison, Oracle’s CTO, during a keynote presentation, it’s “our people versus their computers”.

Ellison spoke about the increasing rate of data that is stolen yearly from cyber-attacks, highlighting that as hackers get smarter, more automation is required to tackle the threats.

According to Ellison: “Automated security does a better job than manual security and costs less. More automation equals higher security, but you have to be willing to pay less.”

Therefore, Oracle has been busy designing this highly automated defence system. “We need a cyber defence system that automatically detects vulnerabilities, fixes vulnerabilities before an attack and if there is an attack, detect it and shut it down,” said Ellison.

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Last year, two data scientists from security firm ZeroFOX conducted an experiment to see who was better at getting Twitter users to click on malicious links, humans or an artificial intelligence. The researchers taught an AI to study the behavior of social network users, and then design and implement its own phishing bait. In tests, the artificial hacker was substantially better than its human competitors, composing and distributing more phishing tweets than humans, and with a substantially better conversion rate.

The AI, named SNAP_R, sent simulated spear-phishing tweets to over 800 users at a rate of 6.75 tweets per minute, luring 275 victims. By contrast, Forbes staff writer Thomas Fox-Brewster, who participated in the experiment, was only able to pump out 1.075 tweets a minute, making just 129 attempts and luring in just 49 users.

Thankfully this was just an experiment, but the exercise showed that hackers are already in a position to use AI for their nefarious ends. And in fact, they’re probably already using it, though it’s hard to prove. In July, at Black Hat USA 2017, hundreds of leading cybersecurity experts gathered in Las Vegas to discuss this issue and other looming threats posed by emerging technologies. In a Cylance poll held during the confab, attendees were asked if criminal hackers will use AI for offensive purposes in the coming year, to which 62 percent answered in the affirmative.

The era of artificial intelligence is upon us, yet if this informal Cylance poll is to be believed, a surprising number of infosec professionals are refusing to acknowledge the potential for AI to be weaponized by hackers in the immediate future. It’s a perplexing stance given that many of the cybersecurity experts we spoke to said machine intelligence is already being used by hackers, and that criminals are more sophisticated in their use of this emerging technology than many people realize.

“Hackers have been using artificial intelligence as a weapon for quite some time,” said Brian Wallace, Cylance Lead Security Data Scientist, in an interview with Gizmodo. “It makes total sense because hackers have a problem of scale, trying to attack as many people as they can, hitting as many targets as possible, and all the while trying to reduce risks to themselves. Artificial intelligence, and machine learning in particular, are perfect tools to be using on their end.” These tools, he says, can make decisions about what to attack, who to attack, when to attack, and so on.

Scales of intelligence

Marc Goodman, author of Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It, says he isn’t surprised that so many Black Hat attendees see weaponized AI as being imminent, as it’s been part of cyber attacks for years.

“What does strike me as a bit odd is that 62 percent of infosec professionals are making an AI prediction,” Goodman told Gizmodo. “AI is defined by many different people many different ways. So I’d want further clarity on specifically what they mean by AI.”

Indeed, it’s likely on this issue where the expert opinions diverge.

The funny thing about artificial intelligence is that our conception of it changes as time passes, and as our technologies increasingly match human intelligence in many important ways. At the most fundamental level, intelligence describes the ability of an agent, whether it be biological or mechanical, to solve complex problems. We possess many tools with this capability, and we have for quite some time, but we almost instantly start to take these tools for granted once they appear.

Centuries ago, for example, the prospect of a calculating machine that could crunch numbers millions of times faster than a human would’ve most certainly been considered a radical technological advance, yet few today would consider the lowly calculator as being anything particularly special. Similarly, the ability to win at chess was once considered a high mark of human intelligence, but ever since Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997, this cognitive skill has lost its former luster. And so and and so forth with each passing breakthrough in AI.

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The next major cyberattack could involve artificial intelligence systems. It could even happen soon: At a recent cybersecurity conference, 62 industry professionals, out of the 100 questioned, said they thought the first AI-enhanced cyberattack could come in the next 12 months.

This doesn’t mean robots will be marching down Main Street. Rather, artificial intelligence will make existing cyberattack efforts – things like identity theft, denial-of-service attacks and password cracking – more powerful and more efficient. This is dangerous enough – this type of hacking can steal money, cause emotional harm and even injure or kill people. Larger attacks can cut power to hundreds of thousands of people, shut down hospitals and even affect national security.

As a scholar who has studied AI decision-making, I can tell you that interpreting human actions is still difficult for AI’s and that humans don’t really trust AI systems to make major decisions. So, unlike in the movies, the capabilities AI could bring to cyberattacks – and cyberdefense – are not likely to immediately involve computers choosing targets and attacking them on their own. People will still have to create attack AI systems, and launch them at particular targets. But nevertheless, adding AI to today’s cybercrime and cybersecurity world will escalate what is already a rapidly changing arms race between attackers and defenders.

Faster attacks

Beyond computers’ lack of need for food and sleep – needs that limit human hackers’ efforts, even when they work in teams – automation can make complex attacks much faster and more effective.

To date, the effects of automation have been limited. Very rudimentary AI-like capabilities have for decades given virus programs the ability to self-replicate, spreading from computer to computer without specific human instructions. In addition, programmers have used their skills to automate different elements of hacking efforts. Distributed attacks, for example, involve triggering a remote program on several computers or devices to overwhelm servers. The attack that shut down large sections of the internet in October 2016 used this type of approach. In some cases, common attacks are made available as a script that allows an unsophisticated user to choose a target and launch an attack against it.

AI, however, could help human cybercriminals customize attacks. Spearphishing attacks, for instance, require attackers to have personal information about prospective targets, details like where they bank or what medical insurance company they use. AI systems can help gather, organize and process large databases to connect identifying information, making this type of attack easier and faster to carry out. That reduced workload may drive thieves to launch lots of smaller attacks that go unnoticed for a long period of time – if detected at all – due to their more limited impact.

AI systems could even be used to pull information together from multiple sources to identify people who would be particularly vulnerable to attack. Someone who is hospitalized or in a nursing home, for example, might not notice money missing out of their account until long after the thief has gotten away.

Improved adaptation

AI-enabled attackers will also be much faster to react when they encounter resistance, or when cybersecurity experts fix weaknesses that had previously allowed entry by unauthorized users. The AI may be able to exploit another vulnerability, or start scanning for new ways into the system – without waiting for human instructions.

This could mean that human responders and defenders find themselves unable to keep up with the speed of incoming attacks. It may result in a programming and technological arms race, with defenders developing AI assistants to identify and protect against attacks – or perhaps even AI’s with retaliatory attack capabilities.

Avoiding the dangers

Operating autonomously could lead AI systems to attack a system it shouldn’t, or cause unexpected damage. For example, software started by an attacker intending only to steal money might decide to target a hospital computer in a way that causes human injury or death. The potential for unmanned aerial vehicles to operate autonomously has raised similar questions of the need for humans to make the decisions about targets.

The consequences and implications are significant, but most people won’t notice a big change when the first AI attack is unleashed. For most of those affected, the outcome will be the same as human-triggered attacks. But as we continue to fill our homes, factories, offices and roads with internet-connected robotic systems, the potential effects of an attack by artificial intelligence only grows.

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