Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are rapidly moving beyond the realms of academia and speculative fiction to enter the commercial mainstream. Innovative products such as Apple’s Siri® digital assistant and the Google search engine, among others, are utilizing AI to transform how we access and
utilize information online. According to a December 2016 report by the Office of the President:
Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and related fields have opened up new markets and
new opportunities for progress in critical areas such as health, education, energy, economic inclusion,
social welfare, and the environment.
AI has also become strategically important to national defense and securing our critical financial, energy, intelligence, and communications infrastructures against state-sponsored cyber-attacks. According to an October 2016 report2 issued by the federal government’s National Science and Technology Council Committee on Technology (NSTCC):
AI has important applications in cybersecurity, and is expected to play an increasing role for both defen-
sive and offensive cyber measures. . . . Using AI may help maintain the rapid response required to detect
and react to the landscape of evolving threats.
Based on these projections, the NSTCC has issued a National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan3 to guide federally-funded research and development. Like every important new technology, AI has occasioned both excitement and apprehension among industry experts and the popular media. We read about computers that beat Chess and Go masters, about the imminent superiority of self-driving cars, and about concerns by some ethicists that machines could one day take over and make humans obsolete. We believe that some of these fears are over-stated and that AI will play a pos-itive role in our lives as long AI research and development is guided by sound ethical principles that ensure the systems we build now and in the future are fully transparent and account-able to humans.
In the near-term however, we think it’s important for security professionals to gain a practical understanding about what AI is, what it can do, and why it’s becoming increasingly important to
our careers and the ways we approach real-world security prob-lems. It’s this conviction that motivated us to write Introductionto Artificial Intelligence for Security Professionals.
You can learn more about the clustering, classification, and probabilistic modeling approaches described in this book from numerous websites, as well as other methods, such as generative models and reinforcement learning. Readers who are techni- cally-inclined may also wish to educate themselves about the mathematical principles and operations on which these meth-ods are based. We intentionally excluded such material in order to make this book a suitable starting point for readers who are new to the AI field. For a list of recommended supplemental materials, visit https://www.cylance.com/intro-to-ai.
It’s our sincere hope that this book will inspire you to begin an ongoing program of self-learning that will enrich your skills, improve your career prospects, and enhance your effectiveness in your current and future roles as a security professional.
