Page 36 - FCW, August 2019

The Next Wave of Cybersecurity
Agencies continue to be buffeted by cybersecurity challenges, but successful solutions are emerging
CYBERSECURITY IS EVOLVING
as the government proceeds on its
journey toward digital transformation. With the help of industry partners, agencies are responding more quickly to hackers, better managing systems to avoid breaches
in the first place and learning to take a more sophisticated, purposeful approach to risk.
However, challenges remain. Last year, the Office of Management and Budget’s “Federal Cybersecurity Risk Determination Report and Action Plan” revealed that 74 percent of federal agencies were either at risk or at high risk for a cybersecurity breach. Furthermore, in 38 percent of incidents, agencies couldn’t identify how hackers had carried out their attacks.
In addition, a recent Senate report states that the number of cyber incidents reported by federal agencies grew by more than 1,300 percent from 2006 to 2015.
How automation advances security
Adversaries don’t hesitate to make use of the latest technology developments, so agencies need to keep up with — if not stay ahead of —
the game. Fortunately, advances in machine learning and automation are fueling progress on cybersecurity. Artificial intelligence,
for example, can help agencies automate
rote security tasks and root out anomalous behavior.
According to a blog post by the New Jersey Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Cell, “AI has already greatly influenced, and will continue to significantly impact, cybersecurity. Benefits of AI to this industry include better management of data and data centers, lower organizational costs and resources, faster threat detection and mitigation, and more reliable authentication of users.”
The organization — which exchanges cyber threat intelligence and conducts incident response for governments, businesses and citizens in New Jersey — said AI can identify potential intrusions through activities such
as excessive resource use, unusual host connections or suspect logins. In addition, the technology can classify threats according to severity and shut down processes to prevent an attack from spreading.
Behavior-based threat detection relies on
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