Security leaders look to AI to find the Needles in Data Lakes

BlackBerry Cylance, a business unit of BlackBerry, announced the findings of its global artificial intelligence (AI) security survey, commissioned with the help of the SANS Institute, which highlights that 85 percent of cybersecurity professionals surveyed believe that AI can improve security, now more than ever, given the vast amounts of available data captured and analysed in the Internet of Things.

The Security Gets Smart with AI survey indicated that, among 261 corporate and government security professionals surveyed, the most intended uses of AI are toward cyber defence (75.2 percent), malware prevention (70.5 percent), and advanced threat detection/prevention (68.6 percent).

"Given the increasing threat landscape and our exploding reliance on IoT devices, the potential for digital malfeasance grows rapidly too, highlighting the need for sophisticated defensive strategies," said Kumud Kalia, chief information and technology officer at BlackBerry Cylance.

"The adoption of AI is critical for security teams to gain predictive advantage, particularly to protect against malware and to detect and respond to traditionally evasive non-malware threats. As we have demonstrated at BlackBerry Cylance, AI can deliver incredibly powerful results across mobile, fixed, and cloud-based security environments."

Based on survey findings, security professionals look to AI security solutions to assist with a range of challenges from advanced threat detection and malware prevention to decision management and regulatory compliance. The areas that elicit the highest rates of adoption are oriented toward general cyber defence, indicating that applications of AI for threat detection, prevention, and response—whether threats are known or unknown, internal or external—will continue to be in high demand going forward.