Prospective Artificial Intelligence Approaches for Active Cyber Defence
It addresses the challenge of defending against adaptive AI-driven cyber threats for cybersecurity professionals, but is incremental as it builds on an existing roadmap.
This paper updates a research roadmap for using reinforcement learning and causal inference in active cyber defense to counter AI-powered cyberattacks, aiming to shift the advantage back to defenders.
Cybercriminals are rapidly developing new malicious tools that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to enable new classes of adaptive and stealthy attacks. New defensive methods need to be developed to counter these threats. Some cybersecurity professionals are speculating AI will enable corresponding new classes of active cyber defence measures -- is this realistic, or currently mostly hype? The Alan Turing Institute, with expert guidance from the UK National Cyber Security Centre and Defence Science Technology Laboratory, published a research roadmap for AI for ACD last year. This position paper updates the roadmap for two of the most promising AI approaches -- reinforcement learning and causal inference - and describes why they could help tip the balance back towards defenders.