Gen. AI is aiding cybersecurity firms — and hackers as well

Cyberattacks — whether from rogue hacking groups or organized state actors — are becoming increasingly sophisticated due to the integration of artificial intelligence. Ahead of the presidential elections occurring around the world in 2024, cybersecurity firms like CrowdStrike (CRWD) are prepping themselves for the oncoming wave of hackers.

As I say, you can't fight fire of a house fire with a garden hose — the AI that's being developed now, using generative AI for attacks is very hard to get away," Bess explains. "It's not just deep fakes where people are... imitating somebody's voice. It's very creative ways to get around a lot of the security that customers are fatigued in buying. So you have to have a more sophisticated AI to fight it. Our engineering teams at Deep Instincts are amongst the smartest that have been on both the defensive and attack and have developed a platform that essentially can predict and prevent..."

Bess, who has previously served as the CEO and President of Palo Alto Networks (PANW) and COO of Zscaler (ZS), touches upon the forecasts for ransomware activity ahead of the 2024 US election.

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Editor's note: This article was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

[AUDIO LOGO]

JOSH LIPTON: Signs of strength in the cybersecurity space. CrowdStrike reporting strong, fourth quarter results and guidance came in above expectations. Joining us now is Lane Bess, Deep Instinct's CEO, also former CEO of Palo Alto Networks, and former COO of Zscaler. Lane, it's good to see you.

LANE BESS: Thank you for having us.

JOSH LIPTON: So we were talking off camera, Lane, about this how CrowdStrike just reported. Obviously, investors really like what they heard. We also, though, recently heard from Palo Alto Networks. Now their investors were disappointed. We heard the company kind of talking about fatigue, right, among some customers. How do we square this? How do we look at these reports? What are the themes we should take away here?

LANE BESS: Yeah. Well, I'll say you had Rob Owens on just before me. And the trend that he alluded to in terms of strength in the cyber tech sector will continue. It's really a question of where the customers need help. And what Nikesh referred to as that there's been so much money spent, and they still have challenges.

And for example, I'll go to a dinner after this with 20 cyber executives. And I'll ask them the question, OK, how many of you feel that you're well protected? And they'll raise their hands. How many of you think that your threats can be prevented? And the answer is no. So the fatigue is the money that's been spent.

CrowdStrike, great company, wonderful results, but they detect and remediate. They don't predict and prevent. And that's really what got me off my bench again to do another company. The AI generative threat is going to raise the bar. And these fatigued buyers are going to need more than companies that are just simply acquiring broader sets of security solutions to strengthen their wallet share with these customers. They need prevention.

JULIE HYMAN: So just to put a fine point on this, what most of the big cybersecurity companies do now is they deal with the threats when they come--

LANE BESS: That's right.

JULIE HYMAN: --rather than stopping them before they get in the door.

LANE BESS: They don't have the AI capability. Not all machine learning is the same. And everybody will talk about their machine learning. But there's a technology called deep learning. And that's why we call ourself Deep Instinct. And this is a level above it really is the most sophisticated segment of AI there is. And

Unless you really have this built into your platform, you're really going to essentially be addressing threats already, hitting your hard disk. You talk about data protection, many companies are already infected and they don't know it.

JULIE HYMAN: Now, I, a layperson, I've always heard, right, while the cops are getting smarter, in your case, the attackers are also getting smarter.

LANE BESS: That's right. So how do you keep up with that?

LANE BESS: And that's a very good question. As I say, you can't fight fire of-- a house fire with a garden hose. The AI that's being developed now using generative AI for attacks is very hard to get away. And it's not just deepfakes where people are imitating somebody's voice. It's very creative ways to get around a lot of the security that customers are fatigued and buying.

So you have to have a more sophisticated AI to fight it. Our engineering teams at Deep Instinct are amongst the smartest that have been on both the defensive and attack and have developed a platform that essentially can predict and prevent. And all of these companies, Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike that are playing very well with this momentum and the momentum that will continue are going to need to beyond just broadening their platforms. They're going to have to go deep, no pun intended, but deep into the AI to actually prevent. That is what customers need and want.

JOSH LIPTON: I'm interested, who poses, in your opinion, the greatest cybersecurity risk at this point? Are we talking about rogue states, criminals, both?

LANE BESS: It is both. But it's an election year. So we're going to see probably a lot in the nation state attack type of things. And it's people are going to use that as an excuse for perhaps election results. But the nation state attacks are going to continue.

But let's face it, the simple generative AI tools that are available today, LLM models, can help even moderately sophisticated bad guys, bad actors, profiteers to launch and relaunch ransomware attacks.

JULIE HYMAN: I'm going to ask that question even more specifically when it comes to our presidential election here in this country. We know that Russia has been involved in past elections trying to influence things through social media, certainly China.

LANE BESS: Yes.

JULIE HYMAN: Will they succeed? Do you think that they actually have influenced past presidential elections? And is there a high chance that they will again?

LANE BESS: Yeah. Well, I'm not necessarily going to make a political commentary. I don't think-- personally, I don't think results were impacted and I'll state that pretty well. The attacks are taking place.

I will say that our federal government has invested and some of the people we recruit are people who've had great careers in terms of prevention in federal government. So I actually think our federal government is very well prepared.

JULIE HYMAN: I don't mean the actual voting results. I mean, how people vote in influencing psychology.

LANE BESS: Yes, yes. Look, at the end of the day, I think there will always be attacks in cyber. This is going to be what I believe to be one of the next frontiers of warfare. I believe this is a time-- and I'm excited about the AI opportunities in cyber. We talk about where the opportunities will be in cyber. They will be in AI. We can talk about other places where there's AI opportunity, cyber is going to be the place that's most needed. And I'm very encouraged by what I see in terms of the early ability for us to outmaneuver the bad actors.