Can generative AI help address the cybersecurity resource gap?

At each cybersecurity occasion I attend, CISOs and different safety professionals talk about the challenges of discovering, hiring and sustaining a workforce of cybersecurity professionals. Not surprisingly, ISC2 not too long ago revealed that the business is experiencing a virtually 4 million particular person workforce scarcity — and that quantity is rising.

Something we will do to place much less burden on our safety analysts and engineers means extra time mitigating cyber danger, which is a large win. Fortuitously, generative AI may help tackle this ability scarcity and have a constructive influence on cybersecurity. Gen AI can allow the next:

Reducing the bar to entry

The cybersecurity industry typically requires specialised coaching and certifications — necessities that may forestall individuals from looking for and safe jobs within the subject. Gen AI will be utilized to technical documentation and different cybersecurity data to create extra dynamic coaching that meets new hires the place they’re, versus constructing coaching materials for a particular consumer background and requiring new hires to try this work earlier than becoming a member of a company.

Creating extra user-friendly documentation

At present, there are pages and pages of technical documentation for nearly each cybersecurity software that exists in the marketplace. Customers typically really feel overwhelmed and have to depend on distributors to coach them on how one can use their options. Gen AI can be utilized to course of and distill that very same data into one thing very exact and significant for the consumer.

Let’s say the shopper must know how one can run a question on this software. As an alternative of the shopper spending hours combing by technical documentation, safety groups can use gen AI to shortly present the three to 5 steps required for the shopper to do that motion. Gen AI may help organizations create extra user-friendly documentation so prospects can entry data sooner and speed up their time to implement and cut back danger.

Lowering danger of burnout

Safety professionals typically face burnout when doing tedious actions reminiscent of looking for documentation and logging their processes and findings. Large language models (LLMs) are purpose-built to research and synthesize knowledge. This may very well be utilized to the group’s great amount of inner and exterior documentation, lowering the time that safety analysts want to seek out data to do their job and talk with their broader workforce. By lowering the ‘busy work’ that burdens groups, the main focus can then be on rising time spent remediating and lowering danger.

Staying updated with the most recent information and analysis

One space that I consider would benefit greatly from gen AI is continuous schooling. As we all know, cybersecurity threats, assault vectors and unhealthy actors are always altering. Nevertheless, too typically, safety professionals are heads down dealing with incidents, writing insurance policies and drafting architectures; they don’t have the time to be educated on what’s taking place outdoors their group. Gen AI can be utilized to collect and distill data pertinent to an business vertical from a company’s trusted sources, from favourite commerce publications and business associations to different most popular analysis and useful resource websites.

Bettering cross-team organizational safety communications

Organizational schooling is one other ongoing problem for cybersecurity groups. The period of time spent synthesizing phishing data may very well be lowered by gen AI and automation. For instance, if a company sees persistent phishing makes an attempt, gen AI might analyze the textual content and create customized messaging primarily based on every division’s perform to greatest equip them to mitigate the chance — giving time again to the security organization in addition to lowering incident load.

Take time to construct the precise guardrails

These are just some methods gen AI can be utilized to carry extra certified individuals into the cybersecurity subject in addition to amplify the output of these already a part of it right now. I’m excited to see what different use circumstances we’ll profit from sooner or later.

However with all cutting-edge expertise, we should rigorously contemplate the way it needs to be used and put the right insurance policies and different safeguards in place.

For instance, a suggestion we make to all of our purchasers is as soon as organizations select a gen AI platform, they need to put in place a paid, contractual relationship so the seller can present steerage on the software and assist troubleshoot any points. Why? As a result of we shouldn’t have our safety groups go to ChatGPT on their very own and create their very own accounts the place there isn’t any visibility or management; we additionally want the power to audit our distributors and guarantee transparency of their processes.

Organizations additionally ought to prepare gen AI on documentation, knowledge and different data solely from trusted sources. Lastly, all the time do not forget that whereas gen AI can do a number of good, the whole lot it outputs should be checked and executed by a human.

Gen AI is already reworking the cybersecurity business and will likely be instrumental in closing the cybersecurity useful resource hole.

 Kyle Black is a cybersecurity architect with Symantec by Broadcom.