The majority of legacy cybersecurity tools require human interaction and/or configuration on many levels. However, it goes without saying that the human touch comes with human error. That’s not to say that humans are deliberately causing harm to their organizations, but things do have a way of slipping through the cracks. And these are the errors that hackers count on to gain unauthorized access to initiate a cyberattack.

This is where AI comes in.

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Now you may be wondering why AI wasn’t in the picture from the get-go. The truth is, considering that we are talking about the legacy cybersecurity tools, the costs that were associated with AI and machine learning technologies were far too much at the time the cybersecurity tools themselves were born. It was more affordable for companies to bring more human intelligence onboard than implement artificial intelligence. However, now that the price of machine learning and AI technologies is lessening, we are beginning to see a shift from human-based response and prevention to increased reliance on smart tools to handle the bulk of event monitoring and incident response due to the superior ability of ML to recognize patterns and detect outliers.

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Firms worldwide are finding it increasingly necessary to bolster cybersecurity with AI, because it is becoming increasingly difficult for humans to identify critical threats without the support (and speed) that AI has to offer. There are already numerous cybersecurity tools, which have already implemented AI to increase efficiency across the board. Each of these tools identifies data sources and create platforms to operationalize AI, identify the right use cases to accelerate and maximize benefits, enhance threat intelligence, deploy security measure, and make use of automation to improve security management. They also install governance for AI in cybersecurity to deliver long-term improvement.

Here are four companies that are applying AI to enhance cybersecurity as we know it:

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Pcysys

Problem: Vulnerability scanning programs offer a means of discovering dangerous static applications and OS exploitable hooks due to unpatched software. The issue with most vulnerability scanning tools is their focus on static vulnerabilities, yet the malicious hacker often targets other vulnerabilities

Solution: Focused on the inside threat, Pcysys’ automated penetration-testing platform mimics the hacker’s attack – automating the discovery of vulnerabilities and performing ethical exploits, while ensuring an undisrupted network operation. Detailed reports are produced together with proposed remediations, one step ahead of tomorrow’s malicious hackers.

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Cythereal

Problem: Catching Zero Day Polymorphic Malware.

Solution: Cythereal is an offensive company. Its mission is to help organizations predict, investigate, and prevent targeted cyber attacks using intelligence extracted from malware.

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Inpher

Problem: Valuable data sets are often difficult or impossible to access due to privacy, security, compliance, competitive, cross-border, confidentially and other necessary restrictions.

Solution: Inpher – Inpher’s pioneering cryptographic Secret Computing™ technology powers advanced analytics and AI applications without exposing or transferring sensitive data across departments, organizations or jurisdictions

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Twosense

Problem: 80% of damages from cybercrime start with compromised identity, even in a world with ubiquitous biometrics and mature 2FA, MFA and IAM products. The friction of traditional authentication requires that it be used sparingly, resulting in challenges occurring off-premise only, for certain applications, with very long sessions, etc.

Solution: Twosense is continuous, biometric authentication in the workplace based on behavior. Their product integrates with existing IAM solutions, providing a layer of security that removes the user friction of 2FA, while automatically ending the session when the user changes.

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Now is the time for all digital businesses to take cybersecurity very seriously, not only in theory but in practice. According to Louis Columbus of Forbes, 61% of enterprises say they cannot detect breach attempts today without the use of AI technologies, and 48% say their budgets for AI in cybersecurity will increase by an average of 29% in 2020. Cybersecurity with AI is a priority for thwarting costly breaches in almost all industries, and it is getting better (and more affordable) than ever before.

AI and machine learning are redefining every aspect of cybersecurity today. Together, they improve an organization’s ability to anticipate and thwart breaches, while protecting the proliferating the number of threats that surface with Zero Trust Security frameworks. AI and machine learning technology are essential to securing the perimeters of any business and help (not replace) their human counterparts so they can focus on more meaningful tasks.

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