{"id":68055,"date":"2023-10-23T11:04:31","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T10:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-gb\/industry\/blog\/?p=68055"},"modified":"2023-10-23T11:04:34","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T10:04:34","slug":"cyber-defence-in-the-age-of-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-gb\/industry\/blog\/cross-industry\/2023\/10\/23\/cyber-defence-in-the-age-of-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyber defence in the age of AI"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
In this age of digital disruption, as every business strives to become hyper-connected, cybercrime becomes ever more impactful and disruptive to our economy and our society, with far-reaching effects on individuals and businesses. Defenders are fighting an asymmetrical battle, where attackers are often better skilled, resourced, and organised than many security teams. Nor do attackers have to play by the same rules we must. Compounding this, in most organisations, the incident response team can receive far more security alerts than they can realistically manage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The use of automated detection and response systems can help tip the scale in favour of defenders by using risk-based algorithms and anomalous activity detection to flag events that require human expertise to investigate further. This helps security analysts detect patterns and behaviours that are not obvious to the human eye, with more precision and speed than human defenders alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As advances in dynamic and adaptive cyber defence systems become reality, what do organisations need to do to become ready for cognitive cyber, and what exactly is it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cognition refers to the mental processes involved in gaining knowledge and comprehension. Cognitive cyber attempts to simulate that process with the application of self-learning algorithms, natural language processing,<\/ins> and big-data mining techniques as applied to the cybersecurity domain. It uses cognitive system overlays to traditional artificial intelligence (AI)\/machine learning (ML) models to achieve something greater than the sum of the parts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To recap:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clearly, linking these models makes for a much more powerful narrative. And, by using the compute power, scalability, and richness of the cloud, we can build entire systems of intelligence that can reason over vast amounts of information \u2013 structured and unstructured.\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our name for this intelligence-based cognitive capability? Microsoft Copilots. These are experiences that use generative AI to help humans with complex cognitive tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Built specifically to augment human security expertise, Microsoft Security Copilot is a combination of the most advanced GPT4 model from OpenAI, with a Microsoft expert-driven, security-specific LLM model. <\/ins><\/p>\n\n\n\n Most LLMs are trained on corpuses of written human language. Security Copilot is trained on security logs, attack telemetry and threat intelligence, the outcome of which is the first AI\/ML model trained specifically for security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the capability is much more than just the large language model. Built into the product are specific cyber skills and promptbooks informed by our global threat intelligence, which runs on Azure\u2019s hyperscale infrastructure. This means that the models inherit Microsoft\u2019s comprehensive approach to security, compliance, and privacy. When it comes to the data Copilot is reasoning across, your data remains your <\/em>data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Security Copilot democratises defender skills by allowing natural language for querying rather than having to learn complex querying languages like Kusto Query Language (KQL). This lowers the barrier to entry for new analysts, which helps address the cybersecurity skills shortage. We’ve launched an Early Access program<\/a> for qualified candidates to explore the capabilities of Security Copilot. Reach out to your sales representative to get more details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Human ingenuity and expertise will always be an irreplaceable component of defence, so we need technology that can augment these unique capabilities to improve the analyst experience all-up. For this reason, initially we are focusing on security operations centre (SOC) use cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The three primary use cases are security posture management<\/strong>, incident response<\/strong>, and security reporting<\/strong>.\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the future, our vision with Security Copilot is to support use cases across security, identity, management, compliance and more, leveraging skillsets across Microsoft and third-party products. In the meantime, and whilst Security Copilot is not yet publicly available, there are things organisations can do to prepare for these cognitive cyber defence capabilities:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Step 1:<\/strong> Secure your identities, especially privileged identities, and SOC members. Attackers will frequently target these individuals to gain access to critical information and systems to elevate the impact of a successful compromise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Step 2:<\/strong> The age of AI is also referred to as the age of platforms. Integrating your security signals into an observability platform brings huge security gains in terms of visibility and automation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Step 3:<\/strong> Initially,<\/ins> Security Copilot is integrated with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and for an even better experience, deploy Microsoft Sentinel and Intune. Going forward, Security Copilot will integrate with third-party products. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, prepare for the risks. As with any new technology, there are both risks and rewards. To help organisations navigate the risk\/reward balance, we\u2019ve released guidance, frameworks, and tooling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n More information,<\/ins> including links to the risk assessment framework, the Counterfit tool and the Adversarial Threat Matrix (MITRE ATLAS) can be found in our Security blog post Best practices for AI security risk management<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For information on our commitment to build trustworthy and responsible AI, please read Responsible and trusted AI<\/a> and Building AI responsibly from research to practice<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cognitive and AIML technologies are here to stay. While they have the power to bring immense potential for improving our defenders\u2019 experience, securing our organisations, and protecting society, we must also be mindful of potential vulnerabilities on an equally large scale and defend against that risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Introducing Microsoft Security Copilot<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Microsoft Security Copilot Early Access Program<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n News Center: Microsoft brings the power of AI to cyberdefense<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Introducing Microsoft Security Copilot<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Use cases for Microsoft Security Copilot<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Preparing for cognitive cyber defence: 3 steps<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Find out more<\/h3>\n\n\n\n