Due to the speed at which the threat landscape has evolved, machines have reached the point where they are able to identify and analyze anomalies at a rate no human can match. Despite the vast and necessary experience and expertise security analysts bring – using human judgement to determine the best course of action – a machine can understand the data in a way no human eye can.
Instead of analysts spending time undertaking mundane monitoring tasks, which makes them feel underappreciated, they need to embrace automated solutions. Then they can focus on applying intelligent, creative and strategic thinking to decipher real security events.
This principle is being embraced across industries. For instance, an AI algorithm modeling electronic health records was able to predict the development of a variety of diseases with 93% accuracy overall, including several forms of cancer.
Another development, the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), analyzes pixel-level information from images. CNN-based models have recently been shown to be equal to human accuracy in picture classification and object detection. One CNN trained on 130,000 skin images was able to classify cancerous lesions with greater sensitivity and specificity than a panel of 21 board-certified dermatologists.
Those are just a few examples from the healthcare industry. In the consumer realm, people are surrendering the need to learn languages to intelligent translation software, in some instances reducing translation errors by up to 87%. More than 40 corporations are currently developing autonomous vehicles, and Amazon is actively exploring autonomous package delivery. People are eager to leave the driving to highly trained AI.
The application across industries and processes are almost endless. So, what’s the solution for security analysts? How can they relinquish control and feel confident that machines won’t get it wrong? For this situation, the answer is Robotic Decision Automation (RDA). With built-in human expertise and judgment at its core, RDA has the ability to make accurate decisions at a rate no human can match.
Through Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, RDA blends human capability with technology whereby it learns from the environment and makes the decision to escalate or monitor a problem faster than any analyst could. Most importantly, this solution lowers the risk of human error.
The pressure put on security teams is unrealistic, and it’s only a matter of time until the increased levels of frustration and stress facing security teams lead to burnout.
Instead, security analysts need to have faith in intelligent security automation tools that will transform their day-to-day lives. This means they can focus on the investigative work where creativity and curiosity can thrive and live up to the expectations of why they entered this profession in the first place.