Addressing one of the biggest hypes in the tech space right now AI, Dennis Xu, VP Analyst at Gartner, discussed the need for AI literacy for effective use of the technology in cybersecurity.
Speaking at the Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit, analysts discussed how Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) can leverage ‘hype’ to drive innovative cybersecurity programs. Particularly, in case of AI, Xu said that 74 per cent of CEOs today believe that AI will deeply impact their industries over the next three years and 84 per cent of them plan to increase their AI investments this year. This means that the focus will also shift to related cybersecurity risks, said Xu.
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However, to make effective use of this hype or excitement around AI, both analysts pushed for AI literacy, where individuals look at AI from a beginner’s perspective dismissing arguments that AI can “think” and “reason” like humans.
“41 per cent of organisations are relying on internal subject-matter experts to upskill their workforce in AI. The same way many organisations have developed security champions, we must develop AI champions to help spearhead AI literacy, understand how LLMs works and what happens when a user asks it a question, so we know that we need to be skeptical and always validate the outputs. We can also learn which AI techniques to use, and more importantly when not to use AI at all,” said Xu.
Xu stated that after AI literacy, the next step is to drive AI experimentation within cybersecurity beyond productivity gains followed by security practices for enterprise AI initiatives.
“More than 98 per cent of organisations say they have adopted or plan to adopt AI solutions.If we have a choice and choose not to be flexible, we’ll be amongst only 1 per cent of cyber leaders that actively oppose AI adoption. Our only way to fortify business AI initiatives is to offer versatile security practices, finding the zones of innovation-readiness and dive right into it,” said Xu.