Artificial intelligence will factor into election security over the next few years, but the new cybersecurity agency at the Department of Homeland Security is still developing its role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are starting at a crawl, walk, run,\u201d said Chris Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), speaking at a Chertoff Group event June 18. \u201cWe\u2019re getting into that walking phase right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Krebs said that CISA has deployed network sensors and intrusion detection capabilities across the country. This technology allows states to take a deeper look at their NetFlow, or network traffic monitoring. But these systems create petabytes of data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo human can sort that,\u201d Krebs said. So algorithms can \u201cdo that tier one, tier two analyst triage and get the human in the loop [to] focus on the higher order stuff and really innovating at the top.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Krebs mentioned that states have varying levels of needs. Some \u2014 such as Illinois, where state officials notified around 76,000 registered voters that their data was breached \u2014 were breached by a SQL injection attack, or Structured Query Language injection, which uses malicious code to steal information from a database.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re still dealing here with some really basic issues,\u201d Krebs said. \u201cBut at the same time, as we continue to push out capabilities, it opens up opportunity for AI and machine learning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CISA is also helping states configure systems correctly and retire legacy systems. One challenge the agency faces with states and AI is that each state is at a different point, Krebs noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a huge opportunity space\u201d for AI, Krebs said. \u201cBut we have to keep in mind, again, that there is increasingly a \u2018haves and have nots\u2019 community out in the enterprise space. We are really trying to shore up as much as possible the \u2018have nots.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moving forward with AI, Krebs wants to ensure that humans remain involved with the process, but would like to use AI to solve low-level problems to free up humans for higher level issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf we\u2019re just talking about a windows box behaving abnormally \u2026 I want to be able to have a tier one or tier two automated process where I can put them in a walled-up garden and we can inspect it or get it up to the policy and bring it back in,\u201d Krebs said. \u201cBut if there\u2019s an industrial control system application or there\u2019s some lifesaving nexus, then we\u2019re talking completely different governance model and decision-making process.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Krebs also said he wants to keep humans in the process because leaning on AI too heavily will disrupt a pipeline of high-level analysts training low-level coders to understanding the algorithms and later move up to higher level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got really good, capable, trained analysts that understand the algorithms,\u201d Krebs said. \u201cAnd so if we lean on machine learning and algorithms down the road, then we\u2019re not going to have that pipeline to get to that level five analyst. So what I want is this kind of virtuous cycle of trained analysts that are working with the base, entry-level coders, to help them understand the algorithms and you can help push them back on top of that development cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Artificial intelligence’s profile is rising but humans need to remain in the process to take on high-level problems, according to the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":37496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":14,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"9":{"categories":["cyber"],"primary_category":"cyber"}}},"categories":[106,31,110,14,33],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3242],"class_list":["post-11870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-it-cloud-report","category-it-networks","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"GOCQEV7ZJ5CNVNSDRENU3S75JQ","arc_canonical_url":"\/critical-infrastructure\/2019\/06\/19\/where-ai-factors-in-to-dhs-election-security\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n