Can Characteristic-Based AI Fight Malware?
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Can Characteristic-Based AI Fight Malware?
Companies should adopt machine learning-based AI that depends on algorithms to detect, prevent, and mitigate malicious files and code based on characteristics. -
Cyber-Security Noise Increases
Unused and cobbled-together technology increases cyber-security noise and could cause vulnerabilities, and C-level executives suffer from "security solution fatigue" because they must constantly evaluate products and cope with failures. -
Companies Play Defense, Criminals Innovate
Organizations struggle to maintain and defend their assets, but cyber-criminals dedicate all their resources toward developing innovative new attack tools -
Choosing the AI Imperative
Without defense-grade machine learning-based AI security solutions, critical infrastructure will lose the battle for cyber-space. -
AI Is Embedded in Malware
Most new malware includes intelligent deception, obfuscation and evasion components. It can alter its signature, regulate activities, generate lures, self-propagate, deliver other malware and maximize damage while minimizing its footprint. -
Quantum Leap Needed
Cyber-security for critical infrastructure should rely on innovative machine learning-based AI anti-malware solutions that do not operate based on signatures or heuristics. -
Beware Faux-AI Solutions
Avoid vendors with solutions that use imprecise algorithms that don't draw from large enough data pools or don't analyze files according to enough features. -
Evaluate Machine Learning Capabilities
Some solution providers tout machine learning capabilities, but they really only offer exception-derived signatures to generic templates. -
Recommendations:
Instead of operating based on signatures or heuristics, solutions should be predictive and preventive, and should detect and mitigate threats before execution. Machine learning AI endpoint security solutions should preempt and mitigate known and unknown malicious files and code based on characteristics. Solutions should be able to scale to protect vital systems. -
Uses of Characteristic-Based AI
Detect and prevent authentication attacks using brute-force to access a data resource or sensitive system. Monitor network traffic. Detect applications that scan for network vulnerabilities.
Artificial intelligence can give organizations a much-needed edge over their sophisticated and evasive adversaries, according to "Signature-Based Malware Protection Is Dead," a whitepaper by James Scott that was recently published by the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT). It is no longer enough to detect and respond to adversaries, wrote Scott, an ICIT Senior Fellow, and most organizations remain ignorant of the fact that their networks are "actively pulsating with threat actors who set up beachheads for future attack and exfiltrate treasure trove's of valuable data." Furthermore, today's technologies are antiquated and no match for cyber-adversaries, he added. No longer can layers of interconnected, vendor-supplied security solutions "Frankensteined together" protect users, networks, data centers and cloud resources, Scott reported. Instead of relying on solutions that operate based on signatures and heuristics, he is calling for critical infrastructure organizations to adopt sophisticated, machine learning-based artificial intelligence that depends on complex algorithms to detect, prevent, and mitigate malicious files and code based on their characteristics before they are executed.
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