The combination of computing capacity together with the availability of immense amounts of information has allowed the development of an ancient ambition of the human being, which is to delegate to machines tasks that until now were only limited to him: the elaboration of predictions in environments complex and decision making.

With Artificial Intelligence (AI) we are able to interpret an image and detect a disease, establish a conversation or anticipate risks much faster than before, such as the risk of non-payment or fraud when collecting insurance. In the field of cybersecurity , which consists of avoiding risks around our digital assets, AI also has a wide field of action.

Artificial Intelligence, as a set of predictive and self-learning techniques, is helping to improve cybersecurity. To do this, it resorts to the continuous calibration of the algorithms as they are exposed to new information. The degree of complexity and dispersion of the systems with which companies currently work means that the traditional and manual means of surveillance, supervision and risk control have been shown to be insufficient. Furthermore, the very use of AI by cybercriminals makes our systems much weaker.

How can you improve Cybersecurity with Artificial Intelligence?

Current applications of AI to cybersecurity are broad:

Thead hunting : identification of threats and neutralization of cyber attacks. Traditional techniques that rely on the identity or the use of indicators of compromise can be improved, closing security gaps when managing and interpreting behavioral indicators.

Vulnerability Management . _ The number of vulnerabilities grows every year and it is not enough to wait for cybercriminals to exploit them to react to them. User and Event Behavioral Analytics (UEBA) makes it possible to identify anomalous behaviors that signal cyberattack activity even before the patches that correct the vulnerabilities are available.

Data centers . AI, as in other areas in which it operates, facilitates the optimization and monitoring of essential data processing centers as well as helping to detect threats of anomalous behavior. It improves the use of these resources and their evolution, with the consequent cost savings and reduction of risks such as, for example, the failure of services or the execution of malicious software.

Network security . Both in the field of action policies against user behavior and in the topographical field when it comes to identifying which processes correspond to each application, AI makes it possible to learn the behavior patterns of network traffic and recommend grouping of workloads, as well as the application of security policies.

Secure identification of users ( Securing Authentication ). Both for the protection of users who access our services, as well as the set of elements that they use, the AI can identify the use of false identities or brute force attacks, conferring an additional barrier to fraudulent access to our services, beyond user authentication or the use of captcha.

Information privacy and compliance. AI helps automatically classify information by its level of criticality in the face of different regulations such as the GDPR. This implies savings with respect to the efforts that are currently made manually, avoiding the risks that this entails.

Blocking bots based on their behavior. Bot activity without having to be malicious consumes bandwidth from our servers, harming the user experience of our real customers. The AI allows to classify the activity of these visitors to limit their action.

These use cases are a reality for the most advanced players in the digital world, such as Google, which introduced AI in cybersecurity in its Gmail service, or IBM/Watson, which includes this combination among its security tools. Other notable cases are those of Juniper Networks or Balbix.

Both because cybercriminals are relying on AI to carry out their attacks and because of the advantages it provides for the management of different cybersecurity systems and services, the implementation of security solutions that use Artificial Intelligence has become a necessity. We will get better at detecting "the bad guys", we will reduce costs for our current levels of security and we will improve the experience of our customers and users.