Modernizing Cybersecurity Operations with Machine Intelligence

Chapter 5. Addressing Readiness and Maturity for Machine Intelligence in an Organization

First Steps to Applying Machine Intelligence to Security

Because of its inherent complexity, machine intelligence cybersecurity is not a “one size fits all” solution for most organizations. Many organizations, however, can benefit greatly from the careful implementation of specific machine intelligence capabilities.

The following five-question list is designed to help organizations assess their readiness to move ahead with machine intelligence cybersecurity initiatives.¹

Are all of the devices attached to my network compliant with my policies?

This is challenging because you need 100% visibility (i.e., no shadow IT), you need a way to have the sensors “know” what your policy is (i.e., desired state), you need a way to assess the current state of the device (i.e., actual state), and you need a way to measure the delta between desired and actual.

Which of my systems are most vulnerable?

This is also challenging to answer because very few organizations have correlated “devices” with “systems” in an automated manner. Thus, while it’s easy to understand which devices are vulnerable, it’s much more challenging to know which systems those devices belong to.

What are the biggest cyber threats facing my organization?

Answering this means correlating vulnerabilities and risk with external threat actor activity, and perhaps finding latent risk/vulnerabilities (or worse) in the system (i.e., through ...