The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity

Historically, cybersecurity has been a field dominated by resource-intensive efforts. Monitoring, threat hunting, incident response, and other duties are often manual and time-intensive, which can delay remediation activities, increase exposure, and heighten vulnerability to cyber adversaries.

Over the past few years, artificial intelligence solutions have rapidly matured to the point where they can bring substantial benefits to cyber defensive operations across a broad range of organizations and missions. By automating key elements of labor-heavy core functions, AI can transform cyber workflows into streamlined, autonomous, continuous processes that speed remediation and maximize protection.  

AI’s cyber applications offer major advantages for the government and business leaders responsible for protecting people, systems, organizations, and communities from today’s relentless cyber adversaries. Acting as a force multiplier for seasoned cyber professionals, AI’s functions across the cyber lifecycle include monitoring vast swaths of data to detect nuanced adversarial attacks, quantifying the risks associated with known vulnerabilities, and powering decision making with data during threat hunts.

Immediate and long-term benefits of integrating AI into an organization’s cybersecurity ecosystem include that it:

• Improves protection and remediation due to AI’s ability to detect nuanced attacks, heighten security, and enhance incident response
• Increases time savings as AI expedites the detection and response cycle time, rapidly quantifying risks and accelerating analyst decision making with data-driven mitigation measures
• Fortifies protection of brand reputation and trust in an organization’s security systems and protocols
• Improves workforce satisfaction, as cybersecurity professionals can focus on higher level tasks as opposed to time-consuming, manual actions

What should you and your organization be thinking about as we look toward a future secured with more and more help from AI? Here are our top takeaways for federal government leaders. Download the full report to see our recommendations for business leaders, technologists, investors, and students:

1. AI is meeting the needs of today’s heightened security requirements. For government environments that require the highest level of cybersecurity protection—defense and national security agencies in particular—AI is expanding what’s possible.
2. Through automation, AI provides a competitive advantage. As AI grows more prevalent, it will be easier to augment human capability in government and Department of Defense cybersecurity roles, expanding impact and efficiency.
3. The application of AI functions will minimize human error. Integration of AI capabilities into manual and semi-manual processes can minimize errors and inconsistencies.
4. New skill sets will be in demand for cyber professionals. Organizations will hire AI experts for their experience applying AI and machine learning technology to cybersecurity instead of just looking for traditional cyber skillsets.
5. This emerging space will continue to expand in impact across industries. Deals in cybersecurity and AI have more than doubled in the past 4 years, and AI’s ability to support cybersecurity will only grow with time. Cybersecurity leaders should explore the breadth of AI use cases and potential applications to the federal mission.