Isn’t the world becoming digital at a freakishly fast pace? In today’s high-tech age, the magic of digitalization has got everything transforming at a faster-than-light speed including businesses, education, entertainment, social interactions, fashion trends and even the products and services we use.

You might have heard of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as it is one of the hottest buzzwords in today’s highly digitalized world. Haven’t you?

In simple words, Artificial Intelligence is all about making machines that can carry out tasks that usually need human touch and intelligence such as analyzing massive amounts of data, problem-solving, facial and speech recognition, and interpreting reports. 

Today, all hail to digitalization, AI is revolutionizing all aspects of social and economic life. From asking Siri to find the cheapest way to get HBO to reforming educational systems, assisting medical diagnosis, giving us self-driven cars and enabling governments to detect criminals via facial recognition.

Over the years, AI has also revamped all mundane business operations from sales and digital marketing to human resource management and enriched customer support.  Now, it is also facilitating companies to fight highly equipped cybercriminals of this age to protect their customers, data, and employees. 

1. Cybercriminals are on the Loose

According to a Security Intelligence Report, the average cost of a data breach increased from $3.50 million to $3.92 million between 2014-2019. 

Since advancements in IT have digitalized everything, easy accessibility of the internet and digital devices has pumped cybercriminals to use these innovations to commit more refined cybercrimes than ever. Consequently, an estimated 74% of businesses are likely to face potential hacking threats in 2020.

While old-school approaches to cybersecurity revolved around prevention-centric approaches and were designed to block attacks, highly equipped threat actors of today are getting more creative and sneaky with their attacks that go undetected. That is why 74% of businesses agreed that data security is their top priority these days. 

Take an example when cybercriminals used voice phishing to trick a CEO of a UK based energy firm and demanded a fraudulent transfer of $243,000 by using AI-based software to impersonate his boss’s voice. 

Another recent example is when a facial-recognition software maker named Clearview, faced a massive data breach when its entire customer list and their social media activities were stolen by cyber cons. 

The fact that workplace environments today are becoming significantly hyper-connected with time due to the growth of cloud and mobile technologies, the increase in internet-enabled endpoints, cloud-based applications, and low security is a cyber-thief's dream come true. 

This means that businesses can no longer trust the network and endpoint protection blindly and need to buckle up to bolster their AI cyber defenses to protect their company from falling into potential virtual traps and fight hackers who use AI as a weapon. 

2. AI Cyber Security Shield Strengthens Digital Security 

Being a modern business, it is certain that you already have multiple layers of protection in place for example hardware and software firewalls and data and network security solutions that identify fishy network connections. 

This means that when hackers try to break into your security parameters, they will be up against antimalware and antivirus solutions that you have used as a shield and then later face the IDS or IPS that you have enabled for intrusion detection.  

But have you ever thought what might happen if these cybercriminals get successful in passing through all levels of protection that you have used? In today’s age when cyber thieves are digitally-armed to the teeth, using human-oriented monitoring and security systems only can get you into lots of trouble.

Since cyber breaches have no boundaries or time restrictions, your company’s response should match them and your systems need to be 24/7/365 vigilant to be able to detect and eliminate potential cyber threats immediately. 

3. Business VS Cyber Attacks—AI to the Rescue 

A recent report revealed that on average, a US company takes about 206 days to detect a breach and 73 days to fix it. Isn’t it alarming?

This means that whether it’s a holiday, past-working hours or when your IT support isn’t available, your digital security shield needs to be up against all malicious activities at all times and that’s why you need AI-powered cyber-based solutions. 

Since AI is super-fast, reliable and can work endlessly around the clock, an AI-driven cyber protection solution can detect and shoo away cyber attackers in milliseconds as compared to human-based systems that may take months or even years! 

4. Hone up your Cyber Security Game with Machine Learning 

It doesn’t matter if you are a big or small enterprise, you should be able to identify every malicious activity so that you can thwart all potential cyber-attacks like a pro. 

Since machine learning is one of the most useful parts of AI that helps industries in analyzing humongous amounts of data to provide business solutions, it can also be used for detecting cyber threats that may harm your information systems by latching on to their weak points. 

Machine Learning allows computers to leverage and modify algorithms according to received data and learn from it to carry out necessary modifications. If we talk about cyber-security, machine learning can equip computers to foresee threats and spot any oddities with utmost accuracy and efficiency than any human can. 

While old-school technology depends heavily on past data records and cannot self-improvise the way AI can, standard technologies cannot cope with new and ameliorate methods and tricks of cyber cons as incredibly as AI can. 

However, if you run a small home-based business with limited funds and are finding it tougher each day to combat cyber thieves then don’t worry! You can opt for a technically advanced provider such as the Windstream Internet service that has introduced its next-gen Kinetic Security bundle to offer a wall-to-wall, top-notch and robust cybersecurity for your network. 

5. HAHA, You Can’t Steal my Identity!

Can you recall the last time you changed your passwords? Or how many times you have forgotten the precious watchword that you created to shoo away cybercriminals? 

Even though password protection is one of the first few things that pop in our mind when we want to keep online threats at bay, passwords give you little or no control when it comes to providing foolproof cybersecurity. It is because often we are too careless when it comes to their management and safekeeping. 

Moreover, many companies use biometric authentication to overcome fragility of password protection, but that also has its downside as hackers can circumvent it by using images of your employees from Facebook or Instagram. 

On the contrary, AI can aid developers in upgrading biometric authentication to turn it into a flawless cyber safety system. A real-life example of this is Apple’s face recognition technology on its iPhone X. 

The AI-driven face ID system by Apple can process a user’s facial specifications via built-in infrared sensors that identify the key correlations and patterns to eliminate risks of identity thefts. 

According to Apple, with this AI-powered software architecture, companies can feel fully secured as there is only one in a million chance for any cybercriminal to fool AI. 

6. Fish the Phishers 

Phishing is one of the most frequently used methods for online fiddlers to launch cyber-strikes on businesses. You might be surprised to know that one out of every 99 emails is well-articulated phishing attempts by cyber cons trying to deliver their payload. 

Thanks to AI-ML, now you can prevent and kick away all phishing attempts like a boss! With the ability to detect and track 10,000+ spry phishing sources and getting rid of them much faster than humans can, AI-ML can work like magic to scan phishing threats irrespective of what part of the world they are coming from. 

7. Network Security Management as Sound as a Bell

Let’s face it, man-made network security systems can have loopholes that make them vulnerable enough to be exploited by online thieves. 

To eliminate the weak-points of traditional technology and to detect any vulnerabilities in the company’s information systems, it is better to deploy AI-ML. AI-ML does this by analyzing hackers and their discussions on the dark web to calculate risks and get rid of any vulnerabilities that they can exploit.  

Moreover, since creating a network security strategy and analyzing a company’s network topography can be time-consuming, AI can be used to speed up these important processes. AI-ML can swiftly observe and learn a network’s traffic pattern and suggest top-notch security policies that may help you save your company from cybersecurity breaches. 

Using AI-ML does not only expedite mundane and time-consuming network security tasks, but also saves a lot of effort and resources that can be used elsewhere. 

The Final Word 

Apart from having many advantages, using AI as a cyber-security shield may need more funds and resources as compared to using old-school cyber-proofing methods. 

However, as the pros mentioned above outweigh the cons, it will be highly beneficial if businesses let AI take charge of their network security as humans alone cannot simply do all that on their own with such fast speed.

Imagine going on a long holiday without having to worry about cyber thieves breaching your private data while your IT technicians are out for lunch. Relieving, isn’t it?

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