How Does Cognitive Security Fit Into Your Business Plan?

The complexity of cyber crimes are evolving by the minute, leaving IT departments in the dark about many of the potential threats their business' could face.

Through the help of cognitive security, IBM plans on changing that.

IT Industry at a Glance

Many of the network security solutions currently on the market are aimed at preventing an attack from spreading once it has occurred. But with increasingly intricate versions of ransomware and malware, once these viruses enter the network it's often too late to do anything about it.

According to IBM, there are more than 10,000 studies conducted on IT security each year and over 60,000 articles published each month on the subject. Just to keep up with this intellectual growth rate in the sector, specialists would have to read roughly 27 research reports and 2,000 blog posts each day.

Cognitive security was invented with the idea that static security models can't keep up with the advancements in the sector. Each patch can only cover so many of the developments in the field, and IT departments can't conceivably follow every single piece of progress regarding the security industry while still maintaining protection of a vast network - the complexities of doing so increase ten-fold in a large Fortune 500 company.

Through machine learning, security systems are becoming able to defend the network against the latest, most dangerous and complex threats organizations have ever faced.

Utilizing Watson

Many IT departments are in the business of collecting data. But, eventually analysis gets to a point of saturation where technology begins to move slower than is necessary. This is where IBM Watson steps in.

According to Forbes, Watson is bridging the gap between computers being able to handle and deliver structured versus unstructured data - the latter being the human language. This opens up a vast number of possibilities. Through being able to read the hundreds of reports and blog posts that come out daily, Watson can provide real-time advice as to how to protect a system against the most advanced threats on the internet.

This doesn't simply mean cognitive security pulls numbers and reads them back to IT specialists. Watson actively searches for ways to improve IT security environments as a means to stay up to date on all of the latest network loopholes. This idea of machine learning will eventually birth a new age of technological use, and companies that are on board now will be ahead of the game.