Cybersecurity talent crunch drives SMEs to embrace AI

FOR all of Singapore's technological achievements and innovations, the city state still faces the same talent shortage as the rest of the world when it comes to cyber defence.

This rings true even despite the great strides the country has made in attempting to bridge the cyberskills gap. In February, the Ministry of Defence announced its new cyber training school aimed at educating cybersecurity specialists. And in last month's budget, the Government revealed an investment of S$22.7 billion for defence, security, and diplomacy - among which cybersecurity remains a focus area.

However, while these initiatives are welcome, there is no quick fix to the cyber problem - and training will only go so far in helping to plug the skills gap.

The reality is, no matter the size and scale of your business, no one is immune from the new digital world order - any organisation, from large multinational corporations to small family-run businesses, are viable targets for stealthy and sophisticated threats.

Cyberattacks are fast-moving and indiscriminate, capable of distributing advanced attacks - en masse - at the click of a button. And the unfortunate truth is that security teams of all sizes struggle to react quickly enough in the face of new automated attacks.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are particularly affected by the challenge of defending against this new era of threat. While there can often be a flawed assumption that SMEs are too small to be lucrative targets, cyber-criminals are keenly aware that these organisations have limited budgets and resources when it comes to cyber defence.

While the big banks and international corporations still get hacked, attackers require more sophistication to bypass multi-layered security stacks and well-resourced security teams.

And both large organisations and SMEs must face the inherent challenges that come with a lack of skilled professionals to join their security teams. Facing a talent shortage, limited resources, and a lean budget, smaller organisations can thus become easy wins for the modern attacker.

In fact, according to a Chubb survey, three in five SMEs in Singapore have been hit by a cyberattack in the past 12 months that halted their business operations. And often more so than large organisations, it is these smaller businesses that suffer detrimentally post-breach.

As SMEs come up against more technically sophisticated and automated adversaries, the only way to combat stealth attacks will be to embrace new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).

Since 2017, about 4,000 SMEs in Singapore have Government pre-approved digital solutions that live in their infrastructure defending their data and operations in real time. Such solutions, but in particular cyber AI technologies, make existing security professionals more efficient by freeing them up from the daily fire-fighting that characterises reactive cyber defence.

Finding an indicator of the next NotPetya or WannaCry is like trying to find a needle in a haystack for security teams. Organisations need to not only find that threat, but find it before it starts inflicting damage - in other words, in real time. But how can you find the subtle threat lurking in your network when your team is sifting through 200,000 alerts a day?

SME security teams face the insurmountable task of triaging thousands of false positive alerts to ultimately - and unfortunately - find an incomplete picture of what transpired. The last thing a lean security team needs is yet another tool producing a profusion of alerts.

But by implementing cyber AI that can rank genuine threats by their level of deviation from the "normal", security teams of all sizes can rapidly investigate, remediate, and move on to the next incident, resulting in hours saved and a more effective workflow.

AI technologies dramatically reduce false positives and alert security teams to genuine threats, ensuring that the teams focus on researching and remediating the most serious threats in the organisation's network.

In an era where employers struggle to hire security analysts, AI also helps with employee retention by enabling cyber professionals to avoid burnout, remain engaged, and focus on higher-level cyberstrategy and future-proofing.

The cyberskills shortage is worsening across Asia and businesses are struggling to plug their security deficit with more manpower. Fortunately, cyber AI steps in as the machine defender, able to not only detect threats that are often difficult to spot, but autonomously respond on behalf of humans to isolate threats before they spread. The cyberskills gap is here to stay and organisations need to confront it head on. The government's active hiring and training of more cyber talent is the one way forward - but as attackers continue to innovate, more action needs to be taken.

By using AI that can detect and respond to emerging dangers no matter where it originates, SMEs can regain control of their networks, do more with the limited resources they have, and prevent early-stage threats from escalating into full-blown crises.

The writer is managing director of Darktrace, APAC.