Bridging the cyber security gap: Augmenting human efforts with AI
Bridging the cyber security gap: Augmenting human efforts with AI
If your security team isn't using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) tools, it will be nearly impossible to keep up with the next generation of cyber threats. Attacks powered by generative AI and optimised tools are already emerging. To stay ahead, your organisation must transform its defences with near real-time alerts and incident response capabilities. Every part of your information security strategy should assess how to incorporate AI into your roadmap to ensure your team can adopt these essential technologies.
To fully harness the power of AI, it's important to focus on specific security capability areas that can greatly benefit from these advanced technologies.
Threat hunting
In threat hunting, AI and ML excel at detecting anomalies and connecting the dots. These technologies assist in understanding the prevalence, rarity, or anomalous behaviour, which is crucial for successful hunts. AI can enhance manual or asynchronous detection processes by providing insights into indicators of compromise or attack. This capability is particularly valuable as it allows security teams to identify and respond to threats more effectively.
Incident response
When it comes to incident response, AI can assist in scoping the breadth of a compromise by providing statistical analysis and identifying similar assets or vulnerabilities. This capability can significantly shorten the time spent on tasks such as finding similar phishing emails or locating vulnerable assets, thereby improving incident response efficiency. However, it is important to note that while AI can assist in decision-making, critical actions such as blocking or isolation should still be performed by humans.
Threat intelligence
AI also plays a key role in threat intelligence by summarising collected data, guiding security teams on mitigations, ranking and scoring threats, and extracting entities from data. AI-driven threat intelligence can provide strategic, tactical, and operational insights to enhance security measures. This capability is particularly valuable as it allows security teams to stay ahead of emerging threats and respond proactively.
Alert management
In terms of alert management, AI assists in the deduplication, suppression, and aggregation of alerts, thereby reducing Security Operations Centre (SOC) alert fatigue and improving incident management. AI can create additional attributes and relationships that are not part of the original event, allowing for more effective aggregation and deduplication. This capability is particularly valuable as it allows security teams to focus on the most critical alerts and respond more effectively.
One of the key benefits of AI in cyber security is its ability to reduce false positives. AI increases incident confidence through correlation, thereby reducing false positives and improving incident fidelity. AI can profile assets and behaviours, excluding legitimate processes and focusing on suspicious ones, thus reducing analyst effort and false positives. This capability is particularly valuable as it allows security teams to focus on real threats and respond more effectively.
Forensic analysis
AI can also assist in forensic analysis through high-scale data mining, image categorisation, pattern recognition, anomaly detection, and language processing. However, it is important to note that AI capabilities in forensic analysis need to be incorporated into commercial tools as well as be proven in courts. This capability is particularly valuable as it allows security teams to conduct more thorough and accurate forensic investigations.
Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) systems
Finally, AI and ML are integral to the next generation of SOAR systems, enabling the easy creation of playbooks and reducing the barrier to automation adoption. Future evolutions of SOAR may rely heavily on AI for creating playbooks based on analysts' behaviors and operational procedures. This capability is particularly valuable as it allows security teams to automate routine tasks and focus on more strategic activities.
How your security program can change with AI
Across all of your cyber security programs, AI will help you achieve more in your day by:
- Improving the quality of AI detection to reduce false positives and improve the identification of real threats in noisy logs
- Building trust in AI for critical decision-making, such as blocking or isolation, to leverage AI's full potential in incident response
- Enhancing threat hunting capabilities by investigating advanced AI techniques for anomaly detection and correlation of indicators of compromise
- Optimising alert management by exploring AI-driven solutions for more effective alert aggregation, deduplication, and suppression to reduce SOC alert fatigue
- Integrating AI into forensic analysis tools to enhance image categorisation, pattern recognition, and anomaly detection
- Leveraging AI for automation by exploring the use of AI in SOAR systems to create playbooks based on natural language and analysts' behaviours, reducing the barrier to automation usage.
By focusing on these key insights and areas to investigate, your company can significantly enhance its security operations approach using AI and ML technologies. The potential benefits of AI in cyber security are immense, and by leveraging these technologies, your company can stay ahead of emerging threats and respond more effectively to incidents.
How BDO can help
In today’s rapidly evolving threat landscape, organisations face increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks that require advanced defence strategies. Leveraging AI-driven technologies is key to staying ahead of these challenges. BDO’s cyber security team can guide you through the process of integrating AI into your security framework, enhancing your ability to detect threats, respond quickly, and strengthen your overall security posture to protect your business for the future.