With great advancements in technology come greater risks posed on organisations around the world. From reconnaissance to action, generative artificial intelligence can be useful for defence all along the cyber kill chain.
Threat detection and analysis
Generative AI can be invaluable for proactively detecting vulnerability exploits, rapidly assessing their extent — what’s at risk, what’s already compromised and what the damages are — and presenting tried-and-true options for defence and remediation.
The technology can identify patterns, anomalies and indicators of compromise that elude traditional signature-based detection systems. It is also strong at synthesising voluminous data on a cyber incident from multiple systems and sources to help teams understand what has happened.
Generative AI can present complex threats in easy-to-understand language, advise on mitigation strategies and help with searches and investigations.
Cyber risk and incident reporting
Generative AI promises to make cyber risk and incident reporting much simpler. Vendors already are working on this capability. With the help of natural language processing (NLP), the technology can turn technical data into concise content that non-technical people can understand. It can help with incident response reporting, threat intelligence, risk assessments, audits and regulatory compliance, and present its recommendations in terms that anyone can understand, even translating confounding graphs into simple text.
The technology could also be trained to create templates for comparisons to industry standards and leading practices. Generative AI’s reporting capabilities should prove invaluable in this new era of heightened cyber transparency.
Adaptive controls
Securing the cloud and software supply chain requires constant updates in security policies and controls — a daunting task today. Machine learning algorithms and generative AI tools could soon recommend, assess and draft security policies that are tailored to an organisation's threat profile, technologies and business objectives.
These tools could test and confirm that policies are holistic throughout the IT environment. Within a zero trust environment, the technology can automate and continually assess and assign risk scores for endpoints, and review access requests and permissions. An adaptive approach, powered by generative AI tools, can help organisations better respond to evolving threats and stay secure.
