Becoming ubiquitous, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is likely to replace humans in the field of cybersecurity by 2031, with hackers using more advanced and sophisticated tools. Only 9% of respondents were confident that AI would definitely not replace their work in the next decade. In fact, nearly a third (32%) said they thought the technology would eventually work to fully automate all cybersecurity, with little need for human intervention. So, is AI going to take over the jobs of experienced cyber professionals? The answer is no; however, AI will dramatically change the type of work cyber engineers do.
In order for IT teams to successfully implement AI technologies, they will need a new category of experts to train AI technology, execute it, and analyze the results. While AI can be great for processing large amounts of data or replacing autonomous manual tasks, it can never replace a security analyst's knowledge or understanding of the field. There are some data points that require a level of interpretation that even computers and algorithms cannot yet support. AI will not be able to completely replace cybersecurity engineers.
AI can replace some of the manual tasks in the cybersecurity space. For example, to respond to any security alerts received from the SOC team, we needed a manual intervention in which the analyst acknowledged to the customer that the alert has been received and is being investigated now. Once they receive an alert, they perform basic research, such as verifying IP address reputation, location of incident, severity of incident, impact, and so on. I can easily say that most of these actions required a level 1 skill set.
This is where AI and machine learning come into play. Machine learning can compensate for lack of safety equipment. AI can help uncover hidden devices and patterns while processing large amounts of data. Machine learning can help monitor inbound and outbound traffic to detect any deviations in behavior in the IoT ecosystem.
If a threat or anomaly is detected, alarms can be sent to security administrators to warn them of suspicious traffic. That said, cybersecurity experts are likely to continue to be in demand, as human oversight of AI and automation programs will continue to be necessary. AI and machine learning can enable analysts and security teams to review large amounts of log and event data from applications, endpoints, and network devices to conduct rapid investigations and discover patterns to determine the root cause of incidents. Meanwhile, less than one in ten (nine percent) trusted that they would continue to work in cybersecurity by that time, and a third (32 percent) believed that the technology would eventually automate all cybersecurity, leaving little or no need for human intervention.
According to Bharat Mistry, technical director of Trend Micro, there is no need for cybersecurity professionals to fear the emergence of AI, because there will always be demand for humans in the industry. I asked more than 500 cybersecurity engineers this same question and 70% of them (myself included) said that cybersecurity jobs should NOT be automated. Each technology presents new challenges and it will be more difficult to maintain data securely. AI can help bridge the workforce gap in the cybersecurity sector, although it may create the need for industry humans to learn new skill sets.
Looking at specific IT industries, 32% of respondents said they believed technology would eventually automate all cybersecurity. Cybersecurity is ready for automation, but some IT leaders think AI could take over the role completely. The rise of cyberphysical systems (CPS), due to the exponential growth of technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), cloud, robots, drones, sensors, etc. In this new era of cybersecurity, barely a quarter of IT leaders believe that access to data will be linked to biometric or DNA data, making unauthorized access theoretically impossible, while security will self-manage and automate.
It also recommends user education and training to extend corporate security best practices to the home, including counseling against the use of personal devices, while maintaining strict access controls for both corporate networks and the home office, including the zero trust. A new study has revealed that many IT leaders are concerned that their jobs will be replaced by AI (opens in a new tab) in the next ten years. According to research conducted last year by the IT security organization (ISC) ², there are 2.93 million open cybersecurity positions worldwide. .
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