Modernizing Cybersecurity Operations with Machine Intelligence

Chapter 2. The Benefits of Applying Machine Intelligence to Cybersecurity

Machine Intelligence Defined

Improving cybersecurity operations over the short term will depend largely on new applications of existing techniques, technologies, and skills. Some approaches will seem more traditional and familiar than others. For example, continuous monitoring and detection will remain part of the cybersecurity operations process for the foreseeable future. Over the long term, however, cybersecurity operations will become more reliant on automation and machine intelligence. Although many people today are familiar with the basic notion of automation, it’s fair to say that most of us still find the concept of machine intelligence new in the context of cyberspace operations. Here is a brief definition of machine intelligence:

Machine intelligence is a field concerned with producing machines able to autonomously perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence by giving them the ability to perceive, learn from, abstract, and act using data.¹

Machine intelligence works by enabling machines to assimilate disparate information and produce predictions and recommendations (i.e., through machine learning). Machine intelligence and machine learning are often conflated, but machine learning is a technique for achieving machine intelligence—not the entire field.

Because machine intelligence is a relatively new term, it isn’t weighted down by the negative connotations of artificial intelligence, ...