By the end of 2024 cyber-crime is predicted to cost the global economy $10.5 trillion.1
In the rapidly evolving field of cyber security, it is imperative for organisations to stay ahead of threat actors, ensuring that their defences are up to scratch to protect their digital assets and sensitive data. Within a myriad of new innovations, Artificial Intelligence is emerging as a beacon of hope, promising to revolutionise the way cyber security has been approached. According to Forbes 76% of enterprises have prioritised AI machine learning into their IT budgets2, highlighting the industry’s recognition to the powerful potential of AI.
Within this blog, we explore the synergies between cyber security and AI, delving into how AI technologies can empower IT teams to automate and augment critical aspects of cyber security operations.
AI has the potential to unlock new capabilities and opportunities, including the ability to generate natural language insights and recommendations from complex data using Large Language Models (LLMs). This not only enhances the effectiveness of junior analysts more effective but also gives them new learning opportunities.
Large Language Models (LLMs) Explained
Large Language Models (LLMs) have the potential to greatly enhance certain aspects of cyber defence. Below we delve into the intricacies of LLMs and uncover the capabilities they bring to the world of cyber security.
Threat Intelligence and analysis:
LLMs gather and analyse data to identify patterns and trends in cyber threats across your network. They offer recommendations and alerts to your IT team, whilst alleviating the burden on workloads by identifying false positives, enhancing the accuracy of reporting. LLMs add context to threat intelligence by using information from different analysed sources. Additionally, they perform technical tasks like reverse engineering and malware analysis.
Security incident response and recovery:
LLMs contribute to automating response and recovery activities, providing a concise summary of the malicious activity incidents. They help IT teams learn from incidents and provide valuable insights and improved suggestions for prevention and mitigation.
Security monitoring and detection:
LLMs aid IT Teams in monitoring and detecting security events and incidents spanning networks, systems, applications, and data. They possess the capability to analyse data from multiple sources, generate prioritised alerts, and provide contextual information for investigation and response. LLMs offer valuable insights within analysing the posture of multi-cloud environments, where they can create comprehensive maps of resources, estimate potential impacts, and offer risk mitigation suggestions. Furthermore, LLMs provide understanding into phishing detection by analysing email content, links, anomalies, or suspicious language indicative of phishing attempts.
Security testing and validation:
LLMs have the capability to automate and enhance security testing and validation activities such as penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, code analysis, and configuration auditing. They generate and execute test cases, evaluate and report results, and offer remediation suggestions. LLMs can create custom apps and tools for specific scenarios, automate repetitive tasks, and handle occasional or ad hoc tasks that require manual intervention.
Security awareness and education:
LLMs contribute to employee education and mitigate insider threats. They can generate realistic phishing emails to simulate attacks and access your organisations susceptibility to phishing threats.
Security governance, risk and compliance (GRC):
LLMs play a pivotal role in automating security governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) activities including policy development and enforcement, risk assessment/ management, audit and assurance, and compliance and reporting.
In the current digital landscape, LLMs are emerging with significant importance , with these models representing not just a technological advancement but as an essential pillar in our defense against the relentless tide of cyber threats. As we continue to see the rise of AI every organisation must take care to implement it responsibly and ethically. Watch our webinar on ‘Preparing for Generative AI’, where CWSI Client Solutions Director, Paul Conaty and Microsoft Enterprise Modern Workplace Specialist, Mirna Atef Youssef delve into the capabilities of Microsoft CoPilot as well as addressing the risks of adopting AI and how to mitigate these.
- The 10 Biggest Cyber Security Trends In 2024 Everyone Must Be Ready For Now (forbes.com) ↩︎
- How AI Is Disrupting And Transforming The Cybersecurity Landscape (forbes.com) ↩︎
Content originated from the Microsoft 2023 Digital Defence Report
