Beyond cybersecurity: protecting data through technology itself

Humans have made great leaps in the last fifty years with the introduction of new technologies that make our lives easier and more productive. However, as technology expands, resources are needed to keep the massive amount of information that travels digitally secure. 

As reported by IEEE, “A recent report from Cybersecurity Ventures and Herjavec Group predicts that there will be 3.5 million unfilled cyber security jobs by 2021.” This means that cybersecurity experts need to find ways to be more efficient while using fewer resources.

The solution? Turn to technology. Artificial intelligence (AI) can analyze data faster than any human and can learn from what it sees to better protect vulnerable systems, freeing up cybersecurity staff to address any identified security concerns.

Hackers are seldom individuals testing a system’s limits. They are groups of people working together to provide maximum damage at a faster rate than any one person can manage. This is where AI can be of great benefit.

“Curating threat intelligence from millions of research papers, blogs and news stories, AI provides instant insights to help you fight through the noise of thousands of daily alerts, drastically reducing response times,” says IBM, a leader in AI cybersecurity efforts.

Using machine learning and language processing, AI continually expands and improves its knowledge base to understand risks, identify relationships between threats, and reduce the time it takes to respond to a security issue.

IBM’s Watson for Cybersecurity “has ingested over 2 billion documents… and is adding thousands more every day. It’s reduced the time to analyze an incident from hours to minutes, greatly accelerating mitigation and reducing the impact to the organization.”

While AI is a key resource for cybersecurity staff in the fight against hackers, it is not a replacement for humans. Both major and minor influences need to be considered before responding to a situation. This nuanced kind of thinking is best suited to experienced cybersecurity staff.

“There are still significant limits to what cognitive technologies can do,” says IBM, “especially in the area of decision making, where humans are able to weigh factors that can’t easily be expressed in algorithmic terms.”  

Students studying cybersecurity at Capitol Tech are prepared to handle a multitude of security risks through coursework in secure system administration and operation, secure data communications and cryptography, malware analysis/reverse engineering, and digital forensics. Students are positioned to be key players in cybersecurity for any business.

Want to learn about cybersecurity? Capitol Tech offers bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in cyber and information security. Many courses are available both on campus and online.To learn more about Capitol Tech’s degree programs, contact admissions@captechu.edu.