Artificial intelligence is making many promising and ground-breaking changes in different industries. It is playing a key role in reinforcing and digitally transforming different business industries all over the globe. Besides using IoT, cloud computing, big data, and machine learning, more and more businesses are thinking of entering the AI bandwagon. According to a survey, 86% of business owners consider AI as mainstream technology and use it for performing many business operations.
According to the IBM report, the rate of AI adoption and exploration is gradually increasing and every 3 in 4 businesses are implementing AI into their business processes. Approximately 48% of companies use machine learning, data analysis, and highly advanced AI tools to address data quality issues.
Today, cybersecurity has now become a major challenge for businesses of all sizes. With the proliferation of IoT devices, and cloud systems, the cyberattack surface in advanced enterprises is quickly expanding. Thanks to AI, making it easier for mobile app development companies, government organizations and software companies to protect sensitive data and identify new types of malware and counter cybersecurity threats. Integrating AI technology into cybersecurity is rapidly becoming indispensable for businesses to limit breach risk and enhance security posture.
AI and Cybersecurity – What’s the Connection?
The rate of cyberattacks and data breach is getting higher day by day. In 2020, the rate of ransomware attacks grew by 150% and more than 30,000 websites were hacked. Usually security experts can’t handle malware attacks. If truth be told, analyzing and improving cybersecurity posture can’t be properly managed by humans. If left untreated, it can cause severe damage to networks.
AI is an amazing cybersecurity solution for businesses that can protect your organization from critical cyberattacks. Cybersecurity AI solutions can help information security teams to minimize the chances of data breach by analyzing massive quantities of risk data. AI-based tools have potential to identify security threats in real time, allowing CISOs to augment under-resourced security operations and improve their security posture.
Here are some important benefits of considering AI for strengthening cybersecurity.
- Spot cyber threats and malicious activities
- Analyze a vast amount of data and distinguish between bots and humans.
- Considering the IT asset inventory, AI-based tools predict breach risk and enable you to reinforce cyber resilience.
- AI-driven endpoint protection is far better than antivirus and VPN solutions. It alerts the security system officer or handles it quickly instead of waiting for the updates.
- Provides an extra layer of security to websites that need customers’ personal data and sensitive information. AI secures authentication and ensures visitors’ data are safe while using your website.
- AI scans the entire system and quickly detects untrusted data. Unlike humans, AI-based tools detect possible threats, respond quickly and simplify security tasks.
- AI deployment allows you to detect phishing attacks, prevent them and improve overall security.
- AI analyzes and assesses your network quicker than information security officers, identifies the weak points, focuses on important security tasks.
- Besides preventing your system from malicious software, AI can automate business processes, transfer and handle a lot of data.
Things to Consider Before Implementing AI into Cybersecurity
AI technology has now become a need of hundreds of thousands of businesses due to its long list of benefits. It can analyze millions of cyber events, identify risk behaviors and quickly respond to deviations. More and more companies are integrating AI into cybersecurity, it is high time for business owners and CISOs to understand AI basics and ways to perfect AI to cybersecurity.
If you have made up your mind and are thinking of using AI-based tools to improve your business overall security. Here are some important steps you need to follow to consider AI-driven cybersecurity solutions.
Know Potential Threats and Risks
Businesses working in the IT sector are vulnerable to different malware threats. AI-driven solutions provide companies with powerful and useful predictive insights with targeted resource allocation. AI technology uses many proactive approaches to improve the security posture. With the help of these innovative technologies, security teams perform their work faster by providing advanced detection capabilities.
Before implementing AI into cybersecurity operations, it is important for businesses to set expectations, understand their goals, risks and success factors. Setting realistic expectations and developing an in-depth understanding of allocated resources will help you get the desired results.
Understand the Basics of the Network
AI has a great potential to improve the efficiency of cybersecurity tools by identifying malicious threats and increasing response time. It is important for business owners to develop a better understanding of the network and its corresponding areas such as visibility, workflow, storage to ensure success.
Don’t Forget the Human Element
There is no denying the fact that AI-based tools help cybersecurity personnel and supporting analysts to improve the overall security by minimizing the chances of errors and augmenting analysis. In short, it automates labor-intensive and repetitive tasks. Prior to taking an AI cybersecurity initiative, you need to polish some important skills required for AI implementation. Unfortunately, many organizations lack trained cybersecurity workers and don’t know how to perform various cyber roles.
As a business owner, you should be aware of the fact which tasks need automation and which require human effort. It is recommended to hire trained cyber data scientists and CISOs that are well-equipped with machine learning models, systems administration, support security operation center and integration of ML into operations. You can also encourage your employees to improve their cybersecurity knowledge by attending webinars, taking online classes and listening to informative podcasts.
Research Thoroughly How AI Technology Can Help Your Organization
Before introducing any new technology to your organization, it is always a sensible approach to consider some use cases so that you have a better idea of its effectiveness. Think carefully, why do you need AI for your organization and how can you make business processes more efficient and generate more ROI? When it comes to implementing AI into cybersecurity, it is advised to clearly check the workflow of security analysts and monitor data sources to figure out why and where you need AI.
Today many organizations use security tools to prevent cybersecurity incidents. These tools can detect, mitigate and improve the overall security posture by thoroughly monitoring the unmonitored data. It is advised to collect the data and statistics of all organizations to check how they made it possible to improve cybersecurity. This way you will be able to make a well-informed decision for your organization.
Automate Process for Generating Higher ROI
When you clearly understand the role of AI for your organization, you will be able to automate processes and allow cybersecurity personnel and data analysts to improve their work. A study suggests that approximately 75% of businesses have a know-how of automation and its benefits, but unfortunately, many organizations failed to launch automation initiatives that save their resources.
If you are thinking of implementing AI into cybersecurity, consider the most important areas of your business for automation. For instance, threat intelligence collection, phishing email¸ vulnerability scoring are few important areas to start with. Organizations with trained security analysts, AI-based tools and resources can generate higher ROI than those who are not aware of AI technology.
To Summarize
In this digital world, it has become essential for organizations to maintain a safe cybersecurity environment by integrating sophisticated machine learning algorithms and AI-driven technology. Thanks to AI-based tools that make analyzing and improving cybersecurity posture easier. These tools help cybersecurity teams to reduce breach risk and identify different types of malware threats. Embracing AI and machine learning enable businesses to automate threat detection and improve their organizations’ cyber resilience.
