Security experts see threat from AI-armed hackers

With Artificial Intelligence becoming all pervasive, IT security experts feel cyber criminals too will catch up with AI tools in 2018. Forecasting a raise in AI-based attacks, they feel cyber criminals will take to machine-learning solutions to spoof human behaviours.

The only way to ward off these newer threats is to strengthen the arsenal by deploying AI tools to get better of the hackers.

“Security analysts look at an ocean of events gathered from log files to identify threats, and determine which events warrant further investigation. A dearth of skilled analysts, combined with an overwhelming array of structured and unstructured data makes it difficult to put security events in context,” said Kartik Shahani, Integrated Security Leader, IBM India and South Asia.

“Gone unchecked, even one event has the potential to lead to a much larger security incident and spell disaster for an organisation, allowing attackers to gain control of its infrastructure, steal sensitive data and damage the brand’s reputation.

“Though AI adoption is still nascent in the cyber-security domain, organisations are seeing the value of delegating these tasks to cognitive and AI technologies powered by IBM Watson.

IBM feels that Africa will be subjects to more cyber threats — attacks targeting organisations based there and events originating from the continent are both expected to rise. “With its growth in technology adoption and operations, rising economy, and increasing number of local threat actors, Africa has the largest potential for new cyber events,” the firm said, listing top trends in the tech security space.

The firm foresees a shift in the nature of ransomware attacks. “Ransom will be lower as hackers move to a volume play and find a price point that is less than the cost of just-buying-a-new-one for users.”

With more and more organisations deploying Internet of Thing devices, hackers could find this space lucrative, too.

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