How can cybersecurity transform to accelerate value from AI?
In Brief
Cybersecurity practitioners are leveraging AI's accuracy and efficiency to stay ahead of adversaries. Cybersecurity should aid AI deployment and experimentation, and play a strategic, proactive, and integrated role in AI ventures across the whole organization. Successful CISOs convey the importance of cybersecurity in AI initiatives, helping the business capture value, transform at speed, and seize market opportunities.
The latest advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and its pace of experimentation across business functions present opportunities and risks for the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). AI has great potential to ease cybersecurity workloads and address the global skills shortage by expanding the scope of task automation, shortening response time, and optimizing visibility across the attack surface. However, the use of Generative AI (GenAI) across business functions is opening new vulnerabilities that many cyber functions are not currently positioned to address.
Research has shown that one of the key traits of organizations with the most effective cyber functions, known as “Secure Creators,” is their speed in adopting emerging technology in cyber defense, including the use of AI and automation. This speed has, in part, allowed them to have detection and response times to cyber incidents that are over 50% quicker than other organizations.
Additional research this year focused on how Secure Creators are responding to the recent surge in AI and GenAI use — both in the cyber function and throughout the enterprise. Through in-depth interviews and topic cluster analysis of academic research publications, the research found that CISOs are proactively embracing AI in the cyber function but are not yet helping other business functions embed cyber measures into their AI models to a large extent.
If CISOs can fill this gap, it will help them drive value across the organization through safer, more widespread adoption of AI. It also offers them a chance to reposition cybersecurity from “the department of no” to true enablers of technology transformation.
One key trait of Secure Creators’ more effective and adaptive cybersecurity approach is their integration of AI — 62% are using or are in the late stages of adopting AI or machine learning (ML) vs. 45% of other organizations. AI in cybersecurity is not new. The relationship can be traced back to the 1980s, and there has been a sharp rise in AI-related cyber research, patents, and investment since 2015. AI is now part of 59% of all cyber patents and is the top technology explored in cyber research since 2017. The use of AI in cybersecurity isn't hype — it has been on the rise for almost a decade in research publications, patents, and investments.
Today, Secure Creators are integrating AI into their detection, response, and recovery processes in new ways, allowing them to stay ahead of adversaries, who themselves are using AI attack methods unhindered by regulations or use policies. By rapidly analyzing enterprise-scale data, AI can automatically detect different attack signatures and new attack methods. With the proper architecture, AI can plug into existing cyber approaches across IT and OT systems to detect incidents faster than people alone.
Advances in deep learning and neural networks now enable the parsing of larger and more heterogeneous datasets in real-time. The ability to self-train and learn is accelerating automation, helping cyber teams continuously monitor networks and applications, detect and forecast threats in near real-time, and respond to incidents faster. Deep learning also improves cyber accuracy and efficiency. A meta-analysis of 69 research studies shows an average accuracy of over 92% in detecting spam, malware, and network intrusions.
Gajan Ananthapavan, Global Head of Security Operations, Intelligence and Influence at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ Bank), says around 30% of the organization’s incident response has been automated, thanks largely to ML and AI. “We ingest more than 10 billion data events each day as part of monitoring, detecting, and responding to potential security events and incidents across our environment,” he said. “We wouldn't be able to manage that volume without ML and AI.”
A CISO at a large North American asset management firm says the company has cut its mean time to detect and respond by at least 50%. Data from a 2023 study shows that Secure Creators saved over 150 days on average detecting and responding to a data breach.
"You need to transform your tech stack before thinking about profiting with things like automation and GenAI. It doesn't make sense to try to automate a broken process," notes the group CISO at Bupa. AI helps cyber teams be more effective with the same or fewer resources, presenting an opportunity to satisfy the CFO by doing more with less. Early analysis points to efficiency gains from the use of AI in cyber defense that can range from 15% to 40%. To get the most efficiency gains, CISOs need to first ensure they reduce complexity and consolidate legacy cyber infrastructure.
As the group CISO at Bupa emphasizes, “You need to transform your tech stack before thinking about profiting with things like automation and GenAI. It doesn't make sense to try to automate a broken process.”
Summary
Secure Creators are advanced in their usage of AI for cybersecurity but are still at the early stages of using it to promote AI usage across the business. The most successful CISOs will be those who can articulate the value of cybersecurity to the enterprise in the AI era, giving the business confidence to adopt AI securely.