Fighting Fire with Fire: Using AI Security Tools to Defeat AI Cyber Threats with Former Home Depot CISO Steve Ward

Enterprise AI Defenders

On the 4th episode of Enterprise Software Defenders, hosts Evan Reiser and Mike Britton, both executives at Abnormal Security, talk with Steve Ward, former CISO of Home Depot. Home Depot is a Fortune 20 multinational home improvement retailer with nearly 500,000 employees and over $150 billion in revenue. In this conversation, Steve shares his thoughts on defensive strategy in the cloud era, how AI can impact resource management in cybersecurity, and fighting fire with fire when combating emerging AI threats.
Quick hits from Steve:
On defensive strategy in the cloud era: “I think the attacks are going to be a thousand times faster than what we're seeing. I think the level of accuracy on interacting with a human is going to be really difficult for people to identify that this is an issue. If you just take email in general, you look at a common spelling error or a grammatical error and you're like, ‘ah, this isn't right,’ and you delete it, that goes away, right? The context of the email can now be generated in a way that is so accurate. I can do that across any SaaS app. I can lure you in any direction. I think fraud picks back up from it; it makes it a lot easier to commit fraud.”
On how AI can impact resource management in cybersecurity: “It means we can retrain [security analysts] or move them to other areas of focus that are going to help us, again, more on remediation, more on the response, more on red teaming, and trying to find things before someone else does. What I have already seen, even from the orchestration side with light AI, I think we're going to see numbers upwards of 80% of the alerts that come in a traditional SOC organization are going to go away.”
On fighting fire with fire when combating emerging AI threats: “I think you're going to see the sophistication change. I'm not sure if it [AI] needs to be more sophisticated, I just think it needs to be smarter and the volume needs to be there. And that's going to be really incredible because what we're talking about in our private circles is you will not be able to identify and defend an AI attack with the last 20 years of solutions. You're going to have to use AI to defend against AI.”
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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.