AI and ML to play a big role in ensuring data security, say experts at Oracle

 At the Oracle OpenWorld conference, discussions around digital security and geopolitical risks led to one conclusion – AI will be the game changer.

As the world gets more and more connected, it is also getting smaller – not geographically, but in pretty much every other sense. Trade, commerce, information sharing, banking and even governments have benefitted tremendously from digitisation, but it has come with its risks – that of cybersecurity.

No one is insulated, as many corporations have learned over the years. Also, with increasing friction, be it political or trade-based, between countries, the threats increase manifold.

“That's where the debate of cyber security is coming in because (government) regulations, changing geopolitical situations and new technologies are converging. At Oracle, we predict cyber security and AI (Artificial Intelligence) are the key adoptions that will change many businesses models by 2025,” says Mark Hurd, CEO of Oracle.

At the Oracle OpenWorld conference, stakeholders discussed that data needs to be secure, even as digital workloads will be the single most important factor for growth over the next decade. AI-based apps and autonomous clouds would ensure data crunching serves customers faster and increases productivity but corporations and data become vulnerable to attack with increasing political imbalances.

Oracle founder Larry Ellison said the company was taking big steps to use AI in identifying, assessing and even solving cyber security threats. “We’ve used a lot of the latest AI and machine learning to find threats. You’re not fighting with both hands tied behind your back anymore.”

He adds the goal has been to move from one generation of computing to the next to protect customer investment in data and applications. “Developers are more productive thanks to the autonomous cloud, they bring up new applications, they do a better job of analysing data. Your system is more reliable. It never goes down,” he said. At the conference, Oracle announced it would host its cloud services from nine locations in addition to the four it hosts from already. The company expects the data centres to be operational early next year.

Speaking on the sidelines, political scientist and president of the thinktank Eurasia Group Ian Brummer said, “Global economy is growing at four percent, but the geopolitical situation is not good. China is not aligned with the US in politics and economics.” He added that the two economic powers were competing with each other on all levels and that, “If a business goes to China, the Chinese government makes the decision about its strategy in their country, and it's the government that aligns everything… The Chinese are an economic superpower and are influencing governments across the world to adapt their ways.”

According to research and advisory firm Gartner, global information security spending will exceed $124 billion in 2019 and worldwide spending on information security products and services will reach over $114 billion in 2018, up 12.4 percent from last year.

In India, companies like Reliance Jio are setting the data consumption trend and the world is moving towards 5G and edge networking. Thaddeus Arroyo, CEO of AT&T Business, said, “All businesses are engaging customers in a digital way, it allows us to deliver best in class experience through a secure network… Moving the data securely away from public network is the key for an enterprise.”

He added, “Organised entities are attacking all networks. When we talk AI and ML, they need to identify and predict attacks. We are moving to unified security management systems, and want everything digital to be secure, especially when the network does 200PB.”

It is a given that irrespective of the political situation in the world, cyber attacks are a reality that all governments and corporations need to be aware of and face. How intelligent systems deal with these attacks is then the key to data security.