Modern organizations are deploying artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to address a wide range of operational and business issues. Many AI applications directly support a company’s data protection needs, offering enhanced security against cyber threats, as well as deliberate or accidental data loss scenarios. Businesses can take advantage of these applications to safeguard their data in today’s challenging threat environment.
Why Does Your Data Need Improved Protection?
A company’s data is arguably its most valuable asset after its people. It is essential to protect this resource from multiple threats that can cause extensive damage to a business.
- External threat actors – Cybercriminals and threat actors are continuously attacking IT environments using an array of tactics. They employ sophisticated phishing and social media attacks to gain access to mission-critical systems where they can plant ransomware or other types of destructive malware.
- Accidental data loss – Companies can lose vital data due to the unintentional activities of trusted employees. A few mistaken keystrokes can inadvertently delete business-critical data, resulting in degraded business operations.
- Malicious insiders – One of the most challenging threats to guard against is posed by malicious insiders with access to valuable data resources. A rogue employee or contractor can damage a company by corrupting or stealing data assets.
How Does AI Enhance Data Protection?
Companies can utilize AI technology in various ways to enhance their data protection and cybersecurity posture. The following are some of the most impactful AI solutions that contribute to improved data protection.
Threat detection and prevention
AI and machine learning (ML) applications learn the characteristics of an IT environment over time. The algorithms understand how systems and data assets are typically used throughout the organization. This knowledge enables the applications to identify threats in real-time by detecting and addressing anomalies. Specific uses of AI in this way include:
- Anomaly detection to spot unusual patterns or behavior that may indicate a data breach;
- Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) tools that continuously monitor the environment, searching for suspicious activity;
- Detecting zero-day exploits to identify emerging threats that are not known to traditional antivirus and firewall solutions.
Incident response and advanced forensics
AI tools can detect, analyze, and respond to incidents faster than human cybersecurity teams. Companies must process tremendous volumes of data when monitoring complex, multi-cloud infrastructure. It is impossible for traditional security methods to keep up with the flood of information and efficiently handle cybersecurity incidents.
AI technology is a crucial component of modern Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) systems. Teams can configure the tools to automatically respond to specific threats and take the appropriate action to protect corporate data. AI can be instrumental in performing root cause analysis to identify how the incident began and which data resources may have been impacted.
Data classification
Modern companies constantly create and ingest new data during normal operations. The information may be in the form of large, unstructured data sets. AI systems can automatically discover and classify new data assets so teams can provide the level of protection they warrant.
Advanced AI solutions can identify PII (Personally Identifiable Information) and PHI (Protected Health Information), so they can be correctly classified and protected with measures such as encryption and restricted access. This ability supports continuous regulatory compliance by ensuring that all sensitive data is protected appropriately.
AI can leverage natural language processing capabilities to understand the meaning in content such as emails and files. For example, detecting the word ‘confidential’ in an email may cause the tool to flag the communication as suspicious and restrict its use to authorized individuals.
Behavior analysis and insider threat detection
Security teams find it extremely challenging to identify insider threats without negatively impacting business operations. Despite the difficulties, it is crucial to detect suspicious activity in real-time to protect sensitive data from hostile insiders with access to the information. AI solutions enhance insider threat detection by baselining normal and accepted user behavior to identify anomalies.
Specific implementations of AI for this purpose include user behavior analytics (UBA), which helps recognize suspicious activity, such as an employee downloading files before leaving the company. AI also supports constant access pattern monitoring to identify employees logging in at unexpected times and making abnormal use of data resources.
Automated data governance
AI can track, identify anomalies, and enforce data policies automatically. The tools simplify data governance by detecting and responding to policy violations. Access to data resources can be revoked in real-time when users break rules, safeguarding information from insider threats. Companies can utilize AI tools for data minimization by identifying redundant or obsolete data that can be deleted from storage.
Best Practices for Implementing AI Data Protection Solutions
Companies seeking to implement an AI data protection solution should take a methodical approach. Organizations stand to gain the maximum value from AI data protection tools by adopting the following best practices.
- Begin with AI-powered data discovery to identify the data assets requiring protection. It is impossible to effectively protect your data if you don’t know it exists or where it resides.
- Assess the discovered data to determine the sensitive and potentially exposed information that companies must protect.
- Choose AI tools that offer transparency and understandable functionality.
- Integrate the solutions with existing IAM (Identity and Access Management) and DLP (Data Loss Prevention) tools.
- Train and tune models over time by monitoring and evaluating their performance to avoid false positive and negative reporting.
- Ensure AI tools support compliance with data privacy and security regulations.
- Include human oversight to avoid over-reliance on AI.
Leverage VAST’s Cloud Expertise for AI-Powered Data Protection
VAST’s team of experienced professionals brings deep knowledge of the major cloud platforms and their AI-driven offerings to the table. For example, our partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides insight into how their AI tools, such as Amazon Q Business, help clients maintain data security and privacy. For companies with an existing cloud presence or considering migrating from an on-premises data center, we can help you identify and implement the right AI solutions to protect your data effectively.
Contact VAST today to discover how you can enhance your data protection with modern, AI-driven tools and solutions.
