One Expert's View on How AI Has Changed Cybersecurity

Despite advancements in other industries, there are still developments yet to be made in machine learning and AI within the cybersecurity space. In this clip from "The AI/ML Show" on Motley Fool Live, recorded on Feb. 23, Motley Fool guest Bob Flores talks about how advances in machine learning and AI could mitigate, and eventually eliminate, the personnel resources issue currently faced today.

Bob Flores: First of all, I would say that AI is very much in its infancy in the cybersecurity arena, little more advanced in some other areas. Part of this is there's a lot of what ifs in the cyber world. It's very similar to the medical world. People have always said, "Gosh, we wish we could have AI do diagnostics in the medical world." Well, it's getting there, but it's certainly not there today. The same thing is true in the cyber world. There are so many variables and very few of the AI algorithms have been exposed to all of those variables just yet. That's why I say it's nascent in that industry. That said, it is there and where it is helping is reducing the need to have more cyber experts on your staff. If you write AI product in there, then maybe you could have five people whereas three years ago you'd have 10 or 15 people looking at alerts and doing all of this sort of thing. The vendors will tell you that my product will weed out all of the alerts that don't mean anything. They can but they have to be trained because the things that don't mean anything in your company might mean something very significant in my company and vice versa. Don't believe that you can buy down the boxes and just go to work. That would be really, really rare. I think in the future we're going to see major advances, especially as we get into quantum computing. We'll have huge advances in machine learning and AI that will significantly alleviate the personnel resources issue that we face in cyber today.