When machines fight machines: Cyberbattles and the new frontier of artificial intelligence

Marcus Fowler (Darktrace)

2:55pm–3:35pm Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Location: 1E 09

Data Engineering and Architecture, Security and Privacy

Secondary topics: Privacy and Security

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Who is this presentation for?

CIOs, CISOs, IT directors, and IT managers

Level

Intermediate

Description

The cyberthreat landscape is changing. In addition to high-speed attacks, today’s most sophisticated threat actors are playing a longer game—one that is silent and stealthy. Their objective is to disrupt operations, undermine trust, or simply learn trade secrets by going undetected inside networks. Digital environments are changing too. Increasing digitization, the surge of IoT devices, and the cloud mean that network boundaries are more porous than ever. Securing the perimeter simply isn’t possible.

Marcus Fowler explores how, to defend against threats that are continually evolving, tomorrow’s cybersecurity must go beyond looking for yesterday’s attacker—it must find what it doesn’t know to look for. AI technologies have led to the emergence of self-learning, self-defending networks that achieve this—detecting and autonomously responding to in-progress attacks in real time. These cyber-immune systems enable the security team to focus on high-value tasks, counter even machine-speed threats, and work in all environments, including the cloud.

Prerequisite knowledge

A basic understanding of the current threat landscape

What you'll learn

Understand how to navigate new types of cyberthreats, including weaponized AI; overcome the limitations of the legacy approaches to information security; adopt an "immune system" model for cybersecurity powered by machine learning; the power of AI to fight back autonomously against in-progress attacks; and real-world cyberthreats thwarted by machine learning, including IoT hacks and stealthy insider threats

Marcus Fowler

Darktrace

Marcus Fowler is the director of strategic threat at Darktrace. Previously, he spent 15 years at the Central Intelligence Agency developing global cyber operations and technical strategies, led cyber efforts with various US Intelligence Community elements and global partners, has extensive experience advising senior leaders on cyber efforts, and was an officer in the United States Marine Corps. He’s recognized as a leader in developing and deploying innovative cyber solutions. Marcus has an engineering degree from the United States Naval Academy and a master’s degree in international security studies from the Fletcher School. He also completed Harvard Business School’s Executive Education Advanced Management Program.