EDITOR’S QUESTION
their network day to day. These could
include hundreds of new devices signing
up to the network, from employee-owned
mobile phones to older air conditioning
equipment, newly connected as part of an
IoT strategy.
The scale of the challenge is often just
too vast when asking human IT teams to
manage the data being shared by incoming
and existing devices, which can easily reach
into the thousands for a large enterprise.
This is where machine learning comes into
its own.
Using machine learning and UEBA (user
entity and behavioural analytics), IT
managers can create standard profiles for
each device on the network. Sales managers
get access to Salesforce, marketing teams
get access to Marketing Automation
Platforms such Eloqua, and so on.
A
rtificial intelligence (AI) has been
a hot topic of discussion in many
industries for a while now, with
healthcare, retail and hospitality, to name
but a few, starting to speculate on the
massive opportunities its development could
bring to how their business is run, and how
customers interact with those businesses.
Many articles are already predicting the
demise of human workers as a result of
AI making inroads into our lives because
we are on the verge of true AI. But when
it comes to the biggest challenges facing
business, these technologies are yet to have
their big breakthrough.
This may all change as we progress into this
information age, and for me, the first proof
point will be IT security. Having grown into
one of our biggest international threats of
2018 with attacks spanning the globe, a
new defence is being developed that will
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INTELLIGENTCIO
allow companies to tackle the latest threats
as soon as they appear on the network. This
new defence is based on machine learning,
a key component of a security framework
that can move as quickly as those who are
looking to breach the network.
IT teams today are faced with a moving
security target. From the devices used by
employees to do work, to the locations we
work in and the people we send data to, our
activities change day by day. It is important
to understand, keep up with and protect
against these moving goalposts.
As is clear nowadays, security is number one
on the agenda for CIOs around the world,
as they move to protect their organisations
against the malevolent attackers who are
looking to breach the network and, typically,
steal personal data. This can be a tall order
for most IT staff that cannot predict the
subtle changes that might take place within
The profile of each user becomes quickly
personalised, and as soon as the employee/
user behaves in a way that strays outside
of their profile, the network sees it, and
sends an alert, which in most cases will
require the user to re-authenticate. In the
case of a malevolent attack, the intruder
will be isolated from the rest of the
network, to limit any potential damage
that might have occurred.
Machines are capable of analysing millions
of individual packets of data, making a truly
individual approach to security possible,
which is more than can be said for the ability
of a human IT team.
With the machine doing the brunt of the
monitoring work within the network, the
human agent need not intervene until
an alert has been raised. This automatic
monitoring offers IT staff exceptional
time savings, which means they can get
on with tackling other IT issues throughout
the organisation.
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