海角大神

It's a common refrain after any recent high-profile breach into federal computers and corporate networks: There aren't enough skilled听cybersecurity professionals to outwit criminal hackers.

That message from听officials, executives, and industry experts isn't just grousing, either.听According to industry estimates, the US needs about听200,000 more workers to fill current cybersecurity roles. Globally, the gap is five times higher 鈥�

The issue has become such a priority that President Obama made increasing the number of cybersecurity workers a key component of his multibillion-dollar听, which was听introduced earlier this year. The White House said earlier this month it plans on boosting the federal cybersecurity workforce by by year's end.

But as businesses compete for scarce cybersecurity talent and policymakers weigh remedies for the digital security worker shortage, the ground underneath the profession is shifting.

Now, computers equipped with sophisticated learning algorithms are performing jobs that until recently required highly trained humans. Over time, experts say, the complexity of cybersecurity jobs performed by machines will increase, further reducing the demand for workers and changing the entire nature of cybersecurity work.

"If we fast forward 鈥� I think we will see a diminished role for humans," says Amir Husain, an authority on artificial intelligence and chief executive officer of , a startup focused artificial intelligence.听

In fact, Mr. Husain and others note, the use of artificial intelligence to do information security work is already happening. For example, antivirus companies听have long relied on听algorithms 鈥� not humans 鈥� to determine whether a given file is malicious or not, based on patterns identified in previous malicious files.听

"Except in very rare cases, where you have an unknown threat, humans are not doing file analysis," he says.

Much of the investment that's going into the cybersecurity space to fuel the development of automation is directed at听responding to cybersecurity incidents. Currently, humans are the ones who figure out how to听respond听to cyberattacks on networks, working to quickly block suspicious communications and听analyze听malicious behavior and software.听But computers could perform the same functions -- and do it much more quickly than people behind the keyboard.

But computers could perform the same functions -- and do it much more quickly than people behind the keyboard.听

In fact, the allure of machines quickly fixing vulnerabilities听has led the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Defense Department's technology lab, to organize the first-ever hacking competition that pits automated supercomputers against each other at next month's Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas.

With the contest,听DARPA is aiming听to find new ways to quickly identify and eliminate software flaws that can be exploited by hackers, says DARPA program manager Mike Walker.

鈥淲e want to build autonomous systems that can arrive at their own insights, do their own analysis, make their own risk equity decisions of when to patch and how to manage that process,鈥� said Walker.听

Technology firms large and small are already moving toward that goal. In May, IBM announced plans to听train a听new, cloud-based version of its Watson cognitive technology听to detect cyberattacks and computer crimes. As part of its training, IBM fed Watson a dictionary of information security-specific terms such as "exploit" and "dropper" and programmed it how to听identify and respond to cybersecurity incidents.

Of course, cybersecurity isn鈥檛 the only work that will be affected by artificial intelligence and automation. A concluded that automation will "affect portions of almost all jobs to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the type of work they entail."

That study analyzed more 2,000 work activities across 800 different occupations and concluded that automation of work is already going beyond routine manufacturing activities and has the potential to transform sectors that "involve a substantial share of knowledge work."

Though the McKinsey study did not look at the field of information security specifically, aspects of it work would seem to make it an industry ripe for automation.

Much information security work boils down to picking needles of useful or important information out of a haystack of unimportant data 鈥� from network traffic to log messages generated by different products.

"It鈥檚 hunting," said John Pescatore, director of emerging security trends at the SANS Institute, a leading training organization for the information security sector. "You鈥檙e looking around your infrastructure and studying [network traffic] for machines that are talking to some [Internet] address or region that your network hasn鈥檛 talked to before."

Today, that work is inefficient and time consuming. IBM has reported that the average organization is presented with听more than 200,000 鈥減ieces of security event data鈥� each day. Responding to 鈥渇alse positives鈥� in that data is a huge and听costly problem for organizations of all types.

The best security analysts are able to cancel out some of that noise and isolate unusual patterns that are suggestive. And, as Passcode recently reported, startups like听PatternEx are already working on ways to use artificial intelligence to stem the flow of alerts to human operators, giving them the ability to do deeper analysis of a smaller number of suspicious incidents.

But data collection and data processing are two tasks that McKinsey鈥檚 study identified as the most susceptible to being automated. And refinements in artificial intelligence听sometimes referred to as听"deep learning" increasingly give machines the ability to mimic human intuition 鈥� a "sixth sense" that sees patterns others miss, said Husain of SparkCognition.

"Insofar as machines can sense and monitor the world in ways that go beyond our biological abilities, they will have greater insight 鈥� higher quality insight with more depth," he said.

But even though automation may play a more crucial role in improving digital defenses, humans will remain part of the picture 鈥� at least for the foreseeable future.

"There鈥檚 a huge need right now in the workforce and I don鈥檛 see that diminishing,鈥� says Richard Forno, assistant director at the University of Maryland鈥檚 Center for Cybersecurity. "We have 10,000 or 12,000 open [positions] for security folks 鈥� and that鈥檚 just one state."

Jack Detsch contributed reporting.

听