{"id":6652,"date":"2017-02-15T18:30:09","date_gmt":"2017-02-16T02:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/02\/15\/news-471\/"},"modified":"2017-02-15T18:30:09","modified_gmt":"2017-02-16T02:30:09","slug":"news-471","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/02\/15\/news-471\/","title":{"rendered":"A.I. faces hype, skepticism at RSA cybersecurity show"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Credit to Author: Michael Kan| Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2017 17:10:00 -0800<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vendors at this week’s RSA cybersecurity show in San Francisco are pushing artificial intelligence and machine learning\u00a0as the new way\u00a0to detect the latest threats, but RSA CTO Zulfikar Ramzan is giving visitors a reality check. <\/p>\n

“I think it [the technology] moves the needle,” he said on Wednesday. “The real open question to me is how much has that needle actually moved in practice?” <\/p>\n

It’s not as much as vendors claim, Ramzan warned, but for customers it won’t be easy cutting through the hype and marketing. The reality is that a lot of the technology now being pushed\u00a0isn\u2019t necessarily new. <\/p>\n

In particular, he was talking about machine learning, a subfield in A.I. that\u2019s become a popular marketing term in cybersecurity. In practice, it essentially involves building algorithms to spot bad computer behavior from good. <\/p>\n

RSA CTO Zulfikar Ramzan speaking at RSA 2017 in February.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

However, Ramzan pointed out that machine learning in cybersecurity has been around for well over a decade. For instance, email spam filters, antivirus software and online fraud detection are all based on this technique of detecting the bad from good. <\/p>\n

Certainly, machine learning<\/a> has advanced over the years and it can be particularly useful at spotting certain attacks, like those that don\u2019t use malware, he said. But the spotlight on A.I. technologies also has to deal with marketing and building up hype. <\/p>\n

\u201cNow all of a sudden, we\u2019re seeing this resurgence of people using \u2018the how\u2019 as a marketing push,\u201d he said, after his speech. <\/p>\n

The result has created a \u201clemons market,\u201d where clients might have trouble distinguishing between useful security products. Not all are equal in effectiveness, Ramzan claimed. For example, some products may generate too many false positives or fail to detect the newest attacks from hackers. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt you can catch some things that you couldn\u2019t catch with these techniques,\u201d he said. \u201cBut there\u2019s a disparity between what a vendor will say and what it actually does.\u201d <\/p>\n

Nevertheless, A.I. technologies will still benefit the cybersecurity industry, especially in the area of data analysis, other vendors say.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, it\u2019s an issue of volume. There\u2019s just not enough people to do the work,\u201d said Mike Buratowski, a senior vice president at Fidelis Cybersecurity. \u201cThat\u2019s where an A.I. can come in. It can crunch so much data, and present it to somebody.\u201d <\/p>\n

One example of that is IBM’s latest offering. On Wednesday, the company\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that its Watson supercomputer can now help clients respond to security threats. \u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Within 15 minutes, Watson can come up with a security analysis to a reported cyber threat, when for a human it might have taken a week, IBM claimed. <\/p>\n

Recorded Future is another security firm that\u2019s been using machine learning to offer intelligence to analysts and companies about the latest cybercriminal activities. The company\u2019s technology works by essentially scanning the internet, including black market forums, to pinpoint potential threats. \u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

That might include a hacker trying to sell software exploits or stolen data, said Andrei\u00a0Barysevich, director of advanced collection at the company. \u00a0 <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you cover almost a million sources and you only have 8 hours a day, to find that needle in the hay stack, you have to have some help from artificial intelligence,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The RSA 2017 show floor.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Customers attending this week\u2019s RSA show may be overwhelmed with the marketing around machine learning, but it will only be a matter time before the shoddier products are weeded out, Barysevich said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have hundreds of vendors here, from all over the country. But among them, there are five or ten that have a superior product,\u201d he said. “Eventually, the market will identify the best of the best.\u201d <\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.computerworld.com\/category\/security\/index.rss<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Credit to Author: Michael Kan| Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2017 17:10:00 -0800<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Vendors at this week’s RSA cybersecurity show in San Francisco are pushing artificial intelligence and machine learning\u00a0as the new way\u00a0to detect the latest threats, but RSA CTO Zulfikar Ramzan is giving visitors a reality check.<\/p>\n

“I think it [the technology] moves the needle,” he said on Wednesday. “The real open question to me is how much has that needle actually moved in practice?”<\/p>\n

It’s not as much as vendors claim, Ramzan warned, but for customers it won’t be easy cutting through the hype and marketing. The reality is that a lot of the technology now being pushed\u00a0isn\u2019t necessarily new.<\/p>\n

In particular, he was talking about machine learning, a subfield in A.I. that\u2019s become a popular marketing term in cybersecurity. In practice, it essentially involves building algorithms to spot bad computer behavior from good.<\/p>\n

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[11062,10643],"tags":[11113,714],"class_list":["post-6652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computerworld","category-independent","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}