The Double-Edged Sword of AI in Cybersecurity with ADT CISO Ryan Fritts

Enterprise Software Defenders

On the 3rd episode of Enterprise Software Defenders, hosts Evan Reiser and Mike Britton, both executives at Abnormal Security, talk with Ryan Fritts, CISO at ADT. ADT is a renowned industry leader in security and automation solutions, protecting homes and businesses around the United States. In this conversation, Ryan discusses the hype vs. reality of AI in cybersecurity, the evolving security risks from adopting cloud computing, and considerations of AI regulatory frameworks.
Quick hits from Ryan:
On the promises vs realities of AI for cybersecurity: “[AI] actually poses more of a benefit to the attacker side from an intelligence perspective. The ability to generate an adversarial AI that can know what various controls might exist and how to best evade them is one that I think the adversarial component is going to be the thing that is most impactful for AI in cybersecurity.”
On AI helping sift through an explosion of data: “The volume of data when you have this many systems in this volume of data sets, the data explosion really hurts. You can't make it a people problem and a tech problem. It's got to be holistic. You have to rethink the problem entirely, you can't approach it the same way, and the advancements that have kind of really been happening on the AI and analytics front have enabled more efficient deployment of resources.”
On AI regulatory frameworks: “I think certainly there's some work out there with NIST and CMMC that they're pushing through the government contracting sector, but those aren't national regulatory standards. The SEC is pushing the disclosure framework, but clarity helps. In the absence of clarity, there's confusion.”
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Enterprise Software Defenders is a show where top security executives share how moves to the cloud have created an evolved threat landscape that requires new tools to protect against cybercrime. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Defenders is produced by Josh Meer.