Report: AI the answer following increased malware encryption

Cyber security officials are relying increasingly on automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence to defend against attacks, according to figures released by Cisco.

The findings - which appear in the company’s 2018 annual security report - show that around a third of companies are using the technology. This, according to Cisco, comes in the light of a more than threefold upturn in the use of encrypted network communication by inspected malware samples, as well as an increase in the “weaponisation” of cloud services.

Speaking of the findings, John N Stewart, Cisco senior vice president and chief security and trust officer, said: "Last year's evolution of malware demonstrates that our adversaries continue to learn. We have to raise the bar now with top down leadership, and business led technology investments [to increase] security.

“Applying machine learning can help enhance network security defenses as, over time, [it learns] how to automatically detect unusual patterns in encrypted web traffic, cloud, and IoT environments.”