How AI helps businesses enhance information security

Hong Kong has seen multiple data breaches and hacking incidents during the year, prompting worries that cybercrimes are posing a growing threat to businesses and organizations.

The Hong Kong Economic Journal recently sat down with information security expert William Tam, Director of Sales Engineering, APAC, at US-based data protection services firm Forcepoint, to discuss the cyber-security threats and how latest technologies like artificial intelligence can help companies protect their data.

HKEJ: We understand that Forcepoint recently published the “Forcepoint Cybersecurity Forecast Report for 2019,” and in the report, you highlighted the latest market trend in artificial intelligence (AI). Can you elaborate on that?

Tam: In the report, we mentioned that companies are now analyzing and looking at AI technology calmly, seeking to utilize the technology. Previously, businesses have deployed AI technology to handle security incidents in enterprise systems, such as problems found in server log files. However, as a number of major information security incidents happened during the year, we can see that AI, in fact, cannot solve all the problems in cyber-security. AI technology-powered solutions require expert adjustment and optimization.

Q: What role does AI play in network security? What are the benefits and costs for businesses to deploy AI in cyber-security measures?

A: At present, AI has two major applications for information security. The first is to find out the anomaly in the system, that is, to observe the abnormal user behavior from investigating the huge network data of the business; the second is find out the trend that enterprises should pay attention to, by looking into the data generated by the system’s firewall.

AI technology is like a double-edged sword. In fact, we expect that it will be common for hackers to deploy AI technology by next year, lowering the advantage a business can have with AI-powered security system. There have been reports saying that hackers have used AI technology to generate new types of phishing emails and URLs for scams.