Artificial Intelligence was referred to as a “general-purpose technology” by Harvard Business Review in 2017, implicating that AI will impact every industry to a certain extent. Cybersecurity industry being on the forefront of adopting and deploying AI, however, is undisputed among industry observers.
One thing is clear: Cybersecurity will become more effective in fending of cyberattacks thanks to AI. But it will also make cybercrime more powerful. Whilst in the past cybercrime was “human vs. human”, we now face a threat situation that is about “machine vs. machine”. A writer for WIRED argued in this regard: “2018 will be the year of the machine-on-machine attack.”
AI has a significant impact especially when it comes to one of the most devastating types of cyberattacks: Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks can easily be used to take down websites and even whole IT infrastructures. The cost of an attack like this amounts to $610,000 on average according to the research firm Ponemon Institute. As shocking as this number is, the damage done by these kinds of attacks goes far beyond lost business revenue. Reputational damage can be a far more devastating consequence of a DDoS attack. Therefore, it is even more important for executives to have a strategy in place that takes AI-based attacks into account.
As highlighted in the Frost & Sullivan Whitepaper “AI in Cybersecurity and its Ramifications for Enterprise”, the impact DDoS attacks have on organizations is huge and AI will increase the damage of these kinds of attacks significantly. Furthermore, traditional DDoS mitigation techniques will no longer provide a future-proof protection nowadays. In a digital world, downtimes pose the biggest risk to organizations and hardware appliances do not provide sufficient protection anymore. The whitepaper by Frost & Sullivan explains how organizations find the right solution for all kinds of AI-based DDoS attacks and what they should pay attention to when choosing the right security partner to protect their digital business.
