IBM Extends Cloudflare Alliance to Combat Bots Using Machine Learning – Source: securityboulevard.com

IBM has extended its alliance with Cloudflare to employ machine learning algorithms to combat malicious bot attacks that are growing in both volume and sophistication.

Nataraj Nagaratnam, IBM CTO for Cloud Security, said IBM Cloud Internet Services, based on the Cloudflare platform for combatting distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, will also use a Cloudflare Bot Management platform infused with machine learning algorithms.

The overall goal is to make use of behavioral analytics to identify abnormal traffic patterns indicative of a cyberattack being launched by a bot network, he added.

Available via the premier tier of IBM Cloud Internet Services, the Cloudflare Bot Management platform applies digital fingerprints across millions of internet properties to classify bots using a scoring tool that has been embedded within the platform.

It’s already apparent that cybercriminals will be making use of multiple forms of artificial intelligence (AI) to increase the volume of botnet attacks. It’s also becoming more challenging to discover the source of those attacks. Cybercriminals harness millions of endpoints and launch them in a way that AI then creates bots that mimic normal human behavior, he added.

In effect, cybersecurity is evolving into a battle between multiple instances of AI technologies that, in addition to increasing the level of scale at which attacks are launched, will also require cybersecurity teams that respond quickly, said Nagaratnam. Time is not the friend of cyberdefenders when attackers can dynamically adjust tactics and techniques in near real-time at levels of unprecedented scale, he noted.

The challenge organizations face is lacking the skills required to effectively combat the previous generation of bot attacks. The next generation of forthcoming cyberattacks will require organizations to rely more on service providers that have the AI resources required to thwart a next generation of attacks fueled by AI, said Nagaratnam.

It’s not clear to what degree cybersecurity will shift from primarily a set of technologies deployed by an internal IT, or dedicated security operation (SecOps) team, to an external service that is consumed. What is clear is the level of scale at which cybersecurity needs to be maintained is fundamentally changing. The issue is that many organizations may not recognize that a shift has occurred until after there has been a series of potentially catastrophic breaches.

There may come a day when the overall state of cybersecurity has significantly improved thanks to advances in AI. In the meantime, it’s likely cybercriminals who have almost limitless resources will be reaping the benefits of AI before cybersecurity teams can take advantage of those same advances themselves.

Ultimately, an AI gap has begun to emerge and it has the potential to wreak havoc in the short term. Each organization will need to decide how they will proactively close that gap. At this point, it’s not a question of if AI will be employed, but when and how.