Complexities of Cybersecurity Beg for AI Solution

May 2, 2017

May 2, 2017 —

By Ernest Worthman

Executive Editor, Applied Wireless Technology

A recent report from Network Asia presents some interesting statistics on cyber security. While I generally don’t write about simple statistics and numbers, I think this warrants a bit of drilling down. Especially since cybersecurity is becoming such a hot topic today. And in some other first-world countries it is further ahead than in the United States.

The numbers aren’t all that surprising, but the stratification across them is interesting. For example, some Asian countries, from 33 percent to 50 percent, report an increasing level of complexity of the cybersecurity challenge. But other countries see exactly the opposite. Other similar Asian countries actually see cybersecurity as becoming less complex – go figure!

With all the noise about Russia now-a-days and what they have allegedly been up to, I don’t believe that anybody has a handle on cybersecurity. And one thing that does pop up in this report is that nobody really feels they are well prepared to stop whatever is headed their direction in the future.

None of this is much of an earth-shattering revelation. It just supports the general conclusion that cybersecurity is both challenging and difficult.

But there is a bright spot. On the horizon are new and powerful emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning. These are going to be the big guns in cybersecurity. These tools will make cybersecurity “intelligent.” To translate, that means the old robots will design the new robots, but the paradigm is taken to the next level. This approach will have the agility, predilection, and preemptive capabilities that are needed to thwart the ever-evolving cyber threats.

While much of this is still on the drawing board, for now, the present methods, coupled with vigilance will be the order of the day. But once this gets some traction a whole new cybersecurity game will begin.