69% firms think they can't respond to cyberattacks without artificial intelligence: Report

Businesses are increasing the pace of investment in artificial intelligence (AI) systems to defend against the next-generation of cyberattacks, a new study from the Capgemini Research Institute has found. Two thirds (69%) of organisations acknowledge that they will not be able to respond to critical threats without AI. With the number of end-user devices, networks, and user interfaces growing as a result of advances in the cloud, IoT, 5G and conversational interface technologies, organisations face an urgent need to ramp up and improve their cybersecurity, it said.

The study titled “Reinventing Cybersecurity with Artificial Intelligence: the new frontier in digital security” surveyed 850 senior IT executives from information security, cybersecurity and IT operations across 10 countries and seven business sectors, and conducted in-depth interviews with industry experts, cybersecurity startups and academics.

Over half (56%) of executives said that their cybersecurity analysts were overwhelmed by the vast array of data points they need to monitor to detect and prevent intrusion. The study foud that cyberattacks were affecting time-sensitive applications (42% saying they had gone up, by an average of 16%). 

Experts say that automated, machine-speed attacks that mutate at a pace can't be neutralised through traditional response systems.

“AI offers huge opportunities for cybersecurity,” says Oliver Scherer, CISO of Europe’s leading consumer electronics retailer, MediaMarktSaturn Retail Group. “This is because you move from detection, manual reaction and remediation towards automated remediation, which organisations would like to achieve in the next three or five years.”

Seventy-four percent of the respondents said that AI investment in cybersecurity enables a faster response time, reducing time taken to detect threats, remedy breaches and implement patches by 12 percent.

Facing these new threats, a clear majority of companies (69%) believe that they will not be able to respond to cyberattacks without the use of AI, while 61 percent say that they need AI to identify critical threats. One in five executives experienced a cybersecurity breach in 2018, 20 percent of which cost their organisation over $50 million.