Watson by International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM), is capable of helping find cancer treatments, and it won Jeopardy. On Monday, at the RSA conference, IBM announced that Watson can now help in Cyber Security investigations. Who saw that coming?
A Cyber Security revolution
IBM claimed Watson can now help mitigate cybercrimes after it read more than a million documents on cyber security. So, Watson for Cyber Security can read millions of documents, or terabytes of information, derive insights from the information and point out potential threats. Security teams spend hours, days or even weeks sifting through information, and sometimes turn up with nothing. Watson for Cyber Security can do the same thing and some through with results in just minutes. Isn’t that a potential revolution in the cyber security field?
Mark van Zadelhoff, the general manager at IBM Security, said, “This is groundbreaking.”
The IBM Cognitive SOC Platform
Watson for Cyber Security will be part of IBM’s new Cognitive Security Operation Center (SOC) platform. The platform combines the cognitive ability of the AI with security operations, the goal being identifying potential threats across networks. The platform is based on IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson. Putting cognitive tech in the hands of cyber security pros will only enhance their efforts- threats will be identified in time, and false positives will drastically reduce.
This new development is timely. Cyber criminals and threats evolve every day, and cyber security agencies have a hard time keeping up. The introduction of cognitive tech into the cybercrime war will help keep up with new threats. Currently, only 7% of security professional employ cognitive tech such as IBMs SOC platform. However, this is bound to change- industry experts speculate that in the next three years the figure will triple.
Who is it for?
Watson for cyber security is currently in use by 50 IBM customers who began testing it before its release. They include, University of Brunswick, Avent, and Sopra Steria. Now, Watson for Cyber Security is available on IBM’s online app exchange. Customers can enjoy the free trial before paying for the premium features of the software. The software makes sense for big corporations as well as small-scale businesses in the health, security, finance, and education sectors. Airlines and automakers are also potential customers.
IBM stock closed at $181.43, after registering a decline of $0.25 or 0.14% in Thursday’s trading session.
