TECHNOLOGY

How AI Is Revolutionizing Cybersecurity: Preventing Phishing Attacks

Published

3 months ago

September 22, 2023

How AI Is Revolutionizing Cybersecurity: Preventing Phishing Attacks

In an era where technology dominates our daily lives, cyber threats have become increasingly sophisticated and dangerous.

Phishing attacks, in particular, have remained a constant menace, causing significant financial losses and data breaches for individuals and organizations alike. To combat this growing threat, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool to prevent phishing attacks.

Source: Timothy Joseph

Phishing attacks involve the use of deceptive tactics to trick individuals into revealing sensitive information such as login credentials, credit card numbers, or personal data. These attacks often come in the form of convincing emails, messages, or websites that impersonate legitimate entities, making it challenging for users to distinguish between genuine and malicious communication.

Here is how AI is revolutionizing cybersecurity by proactively detecting and thwarting phishing attempts.

1. Sophisticated Email Filtering

Source: Sophos

AI-powered email filtering systems are designed to scan incoming emails for suspicious content and sender behavior. Machine learning algorithms analyze various attributes of an email, including sender details, subject lines, and content. By comparing these attributes to patterns associated with known phishing attacks, AI can flag potentially malicious emails for further review or quarantine, preventing them from reaching the recipient’s inbox.

2. Accurate Detection of Subtle Deviations

Phishing attacks often involve manipulating language to deceive recipients. AI-driven NLP models can analyze the text within emails, identifying inconsistencies, misspellings, or unusual language patterns commonly found in phishing attempts. This technology can accurately detect subtle deviations from normal communication, raising red flags for cybersecurity teams.

3. Real-Time Threat Intelligence

Source: Visua

AI systems have access to vast repositories of real-time threat intelligence. They can analyze global cyber threats and adapt their defenses accordingly. When a new phishing technique or pattern emerges, AI quickly learns to recognize it, providing proactive protection against evolving threats.

4. Advanced Behavioral Analysis

AI systems can continuously monitor user behavior within an organization’s network. By establishing a baseline of normal activity, AI can identify deviations that may indicate a phishing attempt. For example, if an employee suddenly attempts to access a sensitive database from an unfamiliar location, AI algorithms can flag this as suspicious behavior and trigger security protocols.

5. Educating & Helping Users to Recognize Potential Threats

AI can also play a role in educating users about phishing risks. AI-driven chatbots or virtual assistants can provide real-time guidance to employees, helping them recognize potential threats and providing best practices for safe online behavior.

Challenges and Limitations of AI in Preventing Phishing Attacks

Challenges_and_Limitations_of_AI_in_Preventing_Phishing_Attacks.png

Source: Springer Link

While AI holds tremendous promise in preventing phishing attacks, it is not without challenges:

Adversarial Attacks: Cybercriminals are increasingly sophisticated and can adapt their tactics to evade AI-based defenses.
False Positives: Overzealous AI systems may flag legitimate emails as potential threats, leading to user frustration and reduced efficiency.
Evolving Threat Landscape: Phishing techniques are continually evolving, requiring AI models to stay up-to-date and adaptive.

What’s Next for AI in Preventing Phishing Attacks?

As phishing attacks continue to threaten individuals and organizations, the role of AI in preventing these threats becomes increasingly vital. AI’s ability to analyze vast amounts of data, detect subtle anomalies, and adapt to emerging threats makes it an invaluable ally in the ongoing battle against phishing attacks. By integrating AI-driven cybersecurity solutions, individuals and businesses can significantly enhance their defenses and safeguard sensitive information in an increasingly digital world.

Source link

Up Next

Friction between finance and tech leaders prevents companies from controlling cloud spend

Don't Miss

From Pickaxes to Autonomous Robots

TECHNOLOGY

Next-gen chips, Amazon Q, and speedy S3

Published

1 week ago

December 1, 2023

Max

AWS re:Invent, which has been taking place from November 27 and runs to December 1, has had its usual plethora of announcements: a total of 21 at time of print.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the huge potential impact of generative AI – ChatGPT officially turns one year old today – a lot of focus has been on the AI side for AWS’ announcements, including a major partnership inked with NVIDIA across infrastructure, software, and services.

Yet there has been plenty more announced at the Las Vegas jamboree besides. Here, CloudTech rounds up the best of the rest:

Next-generation chips

This was the other major AI-focused announcement at re:Invent: the launch of two new chips, AWS Graviton4 and AWS Trainium2, for training and running AI and machine learning (ML) models, among other customer workloads. Graviton4 shapes up against its predecessor with 30% better compute performance, 50% more cores and 75% more memory bandwidth, while Trainium2 delivers up to four times faster training than before and will be able to be deployed in EC2 UltraClusters of up to 100,000 chips.

The EC2 UltraClusters are designed to ‘deliver the highest performance, most energy efficient AI model training infrastructure in the cloud’, as AWS puts it. With it, customers will be able to train large language models in ‘a fraction of the time’, as well as double energy efficiency.

As ever, AWS offers customers who are already utilising these tools. Databricks, Epic and SAP are among the companies cited as using the new AWS-designed chips.

Zero-ETL integrations

AWS announced new Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Relational Database Services (Amazon RDS) for MySQL integrations with Amazon Redshift, AWS’ cloud data warehouse. The zero-ETL integrations – eliminating the need to build ETL (extract, transform, load) data pipelines – make it easier to connect and analyse transactional data across various relational and non-relational databases in Amazon Redshift.

A simple example of how zero-ETL functions can be seen is in a hypothetical company which stores transactional data – time of transaction, items bought, where the transaction occurred – in a relational database, but use another analytics tool to analyse data in a non-relational database. To connect it all up, companies would previously have to construct ETL data pipelines which are a time and money sink.

The latest integrations “build on AWS’s zero-ETL foundation… so customers can quickly and easily connect all of their data, no matter where it lives,” the company said.

Amazon S3 Express One Zone

AWS announced the general availability of Amazon S3 Express One Zone, a new storage class purpose-built for customers’ most frequently-accessed data. Data access speed is up to 10 times faster and request costs up to 50% lower than standard S3. Companies can also opt to collocate their Amazon S3 Express One Zone data in the same availability zone as their compute resources.

Companies and partners who are using Amazon S3 Express One Zone include ChaosSearch, Cloudera, and Pinterest.

Amazon Q

A new product, and an interesting pivot, again with generative AI at its core. Amazon Q was announced as a ‘new type of generative AI-powered assistant’ which can be tailored to a customer’s business. “Customers can get fast, relevant answers to pressing questions, generate content, and take actions – all informed by a customer’s information repositories, code, and enterprise systems,” AWS added. The service also can assist companies building on AWS, as well as companies using AWS applications for business intelligence, contact centres, and supply chain management.

Customers cited as early adopters include Accenture, BMW and Wunderkind.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Source link

TECHNOLOGY

HCLTech and Cisco create collaborative hybrid workplaces

Published

1 week ago

November 29, 2023

Max

Digital comms specialist Cisco and global tech firm HCLTech have teamed up to launch Meeting-Rooms-as-a-Service (MRaaS).

Available on a subscription model, this solution modernises legacy meeting rooms and enables users to join meetings from any meeting solution provider using Webex devices.

The MRaaS solution helps enterprises simplify the design, implementation and maintenance of integrated meeting rooms, enabling seamless collaboration for their globally distributed hybrid workforces.

Rakshit Ghura, senior VP and Global head of digital workplace services, HCLTech, said: “MRaaS combines our consulting and managed services expertise with Cisco’s proficiency in Webex devices to change the way employees conceptualise, organise and interact in a collaborative environment for a modern hybrid work model.

“The common vision of our partnership is to elevate the collaboration experience at work and drive productivity through modern meeting rooms.”

Alexandra Zagury, VP of partner managed and as-a-Service Sales at Cisco, said: “Our partnership with HCLTech helps our clients transform their offices through cost-effective managed services that support the ongoing evolution of workspaces.

“As we reimagine the modern office, we are making it easier to support collaboration and productivity among workers, whether they are in the office or elsewhere.”

Cisco’s Webex collaboration devices harness the power of artificial intelligence to offer intuitive, seamless collaboration experiences, enabling meeting rooms with smart features such as meeting zones, intelligent people framing, optimised attendee audio and background noise removal, among others.

Tags: Cisco, collaboration, HCLTech, Hybrid, meetings

Source link

TECHNOLOGY

Canonical releases low-touch private cloud MicroCloud

Published

2 weeks ago

November 28, 2023

Max

Canonical has announced the general availability of MicroCloud, a low-touch, open source cloud solution. MicroCloud is part of Canonical’s growing cloud infrastructure portfolio.

It is purpose-built for scalable clusters and edge deployments for all types of enterprises. It is designed with simplicity, security and automation in mind, minimising the time and effort to both deploy and maintain it. Conveniently, enterprise support for MicroCloud is offered as part of Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro subscription, with several support tiers available, and priced per node.

MicroClouds are optimised for repeatable and reliable remote deployments. A single command initiates the orchestration and clustering of various components with minimal involvement by the user, resulting in a fully functional cloud within minutes. This simplified deployment process significantly reduces the barrier to entry, putting a production-grade cloud at everyone’s fingertips.

Juan Manuel Ventura, head of architectures & technologies at Spindox, said: “Cloud computing is not only about technology, it’s the beating heart of any modern industrial transformation, driving agility and innovation. Our mission is to provide our customers with the most effective ways to innovate and bring value; having a complexity-free cloud infrastructure is one important piece of that puzzle. With MicroCloud, the focus shifts away from struggling with cloud operations to solving real business challenges” says

In addition to seamless deployment, MicroCloud prioritises security and ease of maintenance. All MicroCloud components are built with strict confinement for increased security, with over-the-air transactional updates that preserve data and roll back on errors automatically. Upgrades to newer versions are handled automatically and without downtime, with the mechanisms to hold or schedule them as needed.

With this approach, MicroCloud caters to both on-premise clouds but also edge deployments at remote locations, allowing organisations to use the same infrastructure primitives and services wherever they are needed. It is suitable for business-in-branch office locations or industrial use inside a factory, as well as distributed locations where the focus is on replicability and unattended operations.

Cedric Gegout, VP of product at Canonical, said: “As data becomes more distributed, the infrastructure has to follow. Cloud computing is now distributed, spanning across data centres, far and near edge computing appliances. MicroCloud is our answer to that.

“By packaging known infrastructure primitives in a portable and unattended way, we are delivering a simpler, more prescriptive cloud experience that makes zero-ops a reality for many Industries.“

MicroCloud’s lightweight architecture makes it usable on both commodity and high-end hardware, with several ways to further reduce its footprint depending on your workload needs. In addition to the standard Ubuntu Server or Desktop, MicroClouds can be run on Ubuntu Core – a lightweight OS optimised for the edge. With Ubuntu Core, MicroClouds are a perfect solution for far-edge locations with limited computing capabilities. Users can choose to run their workloads using Kubernetes or via system containers. System containers based on LXD behave similarly to traditional VMs but consume fewer resources while providing bare-metal performance.

Coupled with Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro + Support subscription, MicroCloud users can benefit from an enterprise-grade open source cloud solution that is fully supported and with better economics. An Ubuntu Pro subscription offers security maintenance for the broadest collection of open-source software available from a single vendor today. It covers over 30k packages with a consistent security maintenance commitment, and additional features such as kernel livepatch, systems management at scale, certified compliance and hardening profiles enabling easy adoption for enterprises. With per-node pricing and no hidden fees, customers can rest assured that their environment is secure and supported without the expensive price tag typically associated with cloud solutions.

Tags: automation, Canonical, MicroCloud, private cloud

Source link