In this Spotlight Podcast, we speak with David Brumley, the Chief Executive Officer at the security firm ForAllSecure* and a professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Brumley is a noted expert on the use of machine learning and automation to cyber security problems. In this podcast, we talk about the growing demand for security automation tools and how the chronic cyber security talent shortage in North America and elsewhere is driving investment in automation. You can also check out a transcript of our conversation below.

Every so often, a technology comes along that seems to perfectly capture the zeitgeist: representing all that is both promising and troubling about the future.

In the 1960s, you think of plastic, which was a pillar of a massively expanding consumer culture in the United States that put “convenience” above all else. That’s the joke behind the now-famous “advice” given to Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock in the 1967 movie “The Graduate” by the older Mr. McGuire: “I’ve got just one word for you Benjamin…’plastics.'”

McGuire was on to something: the use of plastic did indeed mushroom in the decades that followed. Advances in the use of polymers revolutionized everything from food packaging to electronics, telecommunication and medicine. That’s undoubtedly been a benefit to billions of people on the planet. It has also made some smaller number of those people fantastically rich. But there is a downside to plastics and the throw-away culture they engendered, as we now know. Plastic trash now clogs our rivers and streams and micro plastics seep into our water and food and, borne on the winds, make their way to the earth’s most remote places.

That same L.A. pool party in 2019 might have young Benjamin being advised to look into “AI” – artificial intelligence. Like plastics in the 1960s, AI and machine learning are already big and getting bigger. Machine learning algorithms are already being used in transportation to ease road congestion, in healthcare to spot medical errors and improve patient care and in retail to improve the customer shopping experience. The technology is poised to change just about everything else …at least eventually. By 2030 AI could deliver additional global economic output of $13 trillion per year to the global economy according to McKinsey Global Institute research. 

One industry where there is plenty of speculation about the potential applications and benefits of machine learning and artificial intelligence is information security, where high demand and an acute shortage of talent have executives, entrepreneurs and industry analysts argue that the adoption of machine learning and AI is unavoidable, especially if companies hope to stay on top of multiplying and fast-evolving cyber threats without breaking the bank. 

But how exactly will artificial intelligence help bridge the information security skills gap? And even with the help of machine learning algorithms, what kinds of security work is still best left to humans?

For our latest Security Ledger Spotlight podcast, we sat down with someone who is uniquely positioned to answ...