Execs Learning To Trust Artificial Intelligence Security Systems

Radware, a leading provider of cybersecurity and application delivery solutions, released the results of its 2017 Executive Application & Network Security Survey, which shows that executives in the U.S. and Europe are relying more on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning systems designed to protect organizations from cyber threats.

According to a press release announcing the news, this year’s executive survey shows that about four in five (81 percent) of executives have already or recently implemented more reliance on automated solutions. In addition, 57 percent reported trusting automated security systems as much or more than humans to protect their organizations — and two in five (38 percent) indicated that within two years, automated security systems would be the primary resource for managing cybersecurity.

“Businesses have to fight fire with fire,” said Carl Herberger, vice president of Security Solutions at Radware. “Today’s threat actors continue to build highly automated and adaptive tools, like the Marai and Hajime botnets. These attacks can wreak catastrophic damage to a network. Executives that aren’t yet fighting these new dynamic threats with continuously adaptive attack detection and mitigation capabilities are putting their organization at risk.”

It’s not surprising that the majority of respondents (85 percent) said that security threats are a CEO- or board-level concern in their company, and since many don’t believe their governments do enough to protect consumer privacy and prevent fraud, it becomes a company’s responsibility to protect their customers.

With that in mind, nearly half of all executives (47 percent) cited improving information security and implementing smart technology a major goals of their digital transformation, and three-quarters of organizations said that cybersecurity considerations were critical in shaping decisions to transform aspects of the business to digital.

“Executives are scrutinizing the gaps in their security like never before, taking a more active approach to defending their customer experience and avoiding the brand damage that hackers can cause,” said Anna Convery-Pelletier, chief marketing officer at Radware. “Today’s educated consumer is keenly aware of security — as customer experience is now closely tied with reputation management and data protection. Consumers therefore use these critical parameters as the basis for their decision to do business with a company.”

Executives also believe that the biggest security threats in the next three to five years are network infrastructure (27 percent) followed by Internet of Things (IoT) (22 percent) devices and Energy/Power Infrastructure (21 percent).