Donnie Wendt

This talk explores three crucial topics for cybersecurity professionals: artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and active cyber defense (ACD). The Cybersecurity Trinity will provide cybersecurity professionals with the necessary background to improve their defenses by harnessing the combined power of these three concepts. Security teams often treat AI, automation, and ACD as disparate solutions, addressing specific problems. However, there is much overlap, and security teams must develop a cohesive approach to realize the full potential.

With the growth of AI and machine learning (ML), cybersecurity professionals must understand its core concepts to defend AI and ML-based systems. Next, we turn our attention to security automation. We will discuss strategies for a successful security automation implementation and strategies that can lead to failure. However, accelerating the defense is only one side of the equation. Defenders can also implement ACD methods to disrupt and slow the attacker. Finally, we will combine these three concepts to form a comprehensive strategy aligned with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. The resulting strategy will have AI as the foundation, incorporating automation to speed up defense and ACD to disrupt the attacker.

Attendee Objectives:

• Learn how to protect AI and ML systems by recognizing the vulnerabilities throughout their lifecycle.
• Integrate AI and ML-based systems to enhance cybersecurity.
• Develop security automation processes to enhance situation awareness, speed the time to respond, and increase the bandwidth of the limited security operations staff.
• Develop an ACD strategy to slow the attackers while minimizing legal and ethical concerns.
• Design a comprehensive strategy with AI as the foundation, incorporating automation to speed up defense and ACD to disrupt the attacker.