Cybersecurity in 'Red Queen race' against threats: Cato CEO
AI and cybersecurity were the focus of investors and business leaders at the Barclays Global Tech Conference in San Francisco.
Cato Networks co-founder and CEO Shlomo Kramer joined Yahoo Finance’s Seana Smith to discuss artificial intelligence's growing influence on cybersecurity and the industry's outlook for 2024.
"AI stacks up with the iPhone and with the personal computer and with the internet. It’s at that level of importance," Kramer said.
Kramer also discussed challenges posed by artificial intelligence, including deep fakes and the “industrialization of attacks."
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Video Transcript
SEANA SMITH: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance. Two of the dominating themes here at Barclays Global Tech Conference is AI and cybersecurity. So let's talk a little bit more about how AI is reshaping the cybersecurity landscape and also what we can expect in terms of some of the themes for cybersecurity in the new year, I want to bring in Shlomo Kramer. He's a co-founder and CEO of Cato Networks. Shlomo, it's great to have you here. Thanks so much for taking the time.
SHLOMO KRAMER: Thank you for having me.
SEANA SMITH: So let's talk about the impact of AI on cybersecurity. What exactly has that impact been so far?
SHLOMO KRAMER: So I think there are two dimensions to the impact. One is new types of attacks, right? Mainly deepfake and how do you know this is real or not. That's becoming a much bigger problem within AI. And the second is just industrialization of attacks, right? So if it's a human being behind the attack, there's a certain pace to the attack. If it's an AI machine, that becomes much faster and much broader, much more quickly. So, really, the defenses needs to keep pace with both new types of attack and new scale of attacks.
SEANA SMITH: And how are you doing that at Cato Networks?
SHLOMO KRAMER: By using AI, of course.
SEANA SMITH: Which is so interesting. So when we talk about the fact that we are using AI to kind of fend off some of the risk that AI poses, how are you doing that, and I guess in real time, how much more effective is it for you at Cato Networks in terms of recognizing some of those attacks?
SHLOMO KRAMER: So first of all, AI for us is not new at Cato Networks. We've been using AI since day one. As a cloud service, as the largest SaaS provider in the world, we used the AI from day one to collect all the data from our customers and run algorithms and find attacks.
So this is just a continuation, and now with the large language models, which is the next generation of AI, this is very much part of our roadmap and what we embed in our solution. So that's an ongoing-- like, a red queen race, if you want. You have to run as fast as you can in order to stay in the same place against the attackers.
SEANA SMITH: And how would you categorize-- you're a veteran of the industry. You've been around for many new breakthroughs, many new technologies. In terms of what AI is doing to your industry, more broadly speaking, touching almost every single industry comparing, that to some of the innovations in the past, how does it stack up?
SHLOMO KRAMER: It stacks up with the iPhone and with the personal computer and with the internet, I think. That's at that level of importance. So, absolutely, that's a real revolution, and we are just beginning that revolution.
