Dive Brief:

• The best future cyberdefense model will combine AI and humans, says Steve Grobman, chief technology officer at McAfee, according to Venture Beat. Grobman believes AI and machine learning should be used to aid human cybersecurity workers rather than attempt to replace them.

• Grobman said because attackers are human, they are good at figuring out ways around defenses. They can also use AI to their advantage to launch attacks.

• While the attacker has held the upper hand, Grobman said AI could help swing favor back to the defender side.

Dive Insight:

When it comes to cybersecurity, one concern is that hackers will begin using AI to launch attacks at the same time cyber-defense companies use AI to protect companies. The result could be an escalating security battle in which whoever has the better AI system on a particular day wins.

Either way, the use of AI is likely to be big in cybersecurity. But Doomsday predictions about robots completely taking over cybersecurity and other jobs have been overhyped and over exaggerated. There are areas where humans outperform machines — such as any task requiring negotiation, judgment or creativity.

On the positive side, leveraging AI in cybersecurity could aid the current cybersecurity talent shortage and allow human workers to focus on more complex, challenging tasks while machines handle the basic blocking and tackling. Only 60% or less of actual work time today is spent productively, according to a report from Atlassian. If employees had access to tools and technology to automate their workflow, the amount of time spent on workflow disruptions could be drastically lowered.