For the second year running, generative artificial intelligence (genAI) continues to dominate the discussion and headlines at the RSA conference. Major technology and cybersecurity companies, including Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, Google, CrowdStrike and IBM, announced advancements in genAI-driven security or securing AI measures.

The news comes at a time when the demand is surging. Deloitte reports the AI cybersecurity market is expected to hit $102.78 billion by 2032 and 69% of enterprises believe AI is necessary for cybersecurity due to the increasing number of threats that cybersecurity analysts can handle.

A recent IBM and AWS survey of 200 plus C-suite execs showed that 82% of the respondents stated that secure and trustworthy AI is essential to the success of their business, but only 24% of their current genAI projects have a component to secure the initiatives.

Here are the product innovations from Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, Google, CrowdStrike and IBM, aiming to address this issue:

Palo Alto Networks’ Precision AI combines genAI, machine learning and DL

Palo Alto Networks unveiled its proprietary AI system that combines genAI, machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) capabilities. It is built on the vendor’s security dataset and proven playbooks and designed for guided automation and actionable insights.

The security giant integrates Precision AI with all of its existing and new capabilities across its platforms — network security, cloud security and security operations (DevOps) to address use cases as follows:

  • Counter AI-powered threats and attacks: Palo Alto Networks offers the Precision AI Security Bundle including malware prevention, URL filtering, threat prevention and DNS security tools to address potential negative impacts or risks associated with the malicious use of AI.
  • Secure AI use: The vendor creates a secure AI ecosystem that includes its AI access security, Prisma Cloud AI security posture management, AI runtime security and AI-enabled Code to Cloud products. The goal is to improve compliance and minimize data exposure from development to deployment.
  • Simplify security with AI: Palo Alto Networks introduced three new genAI assistants, powered by Precision AI, for its Strata network security platform, Prisma Cloud platform and Cortex XSIAM platform. The copilots are designed to assist in secure access service edge (SASE) and next-generation firewall (NGFX) deployments, risk prioritization, remediation, threat detection and reporting, and security operation center (SOC) support.
Microsoft enhances AI security and governance

Microsoft has introduced several updates to Microsoft Defender cloud security and Microsoft Purview data protection solutions to enhance the security and governance of generative AI applications.

The new capabilities in Microsoft Defender for Cloud include AI security posture management across platforms like Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Azure ML and Amazon Bedrock to identify risks, map attack paths and offer built-in security best practices on AI applications, which include new detections that alert to malicious activity for AI workloads at runtime.

Meanwhile, Microsoft previews its Purview AI Hub, offering insights into AI application usage, such as sensitive data shared with AI applications, the total number of users interacting with AI apps and their associated risk levels. The vendor also previews a capability in the AI hub to help customers discover potential AI interactions that violate enterprise and regulatory policies in areas like hate and discrimination, corporate sabotage and money laundering.

Google introduces Mandiant AI consulting services

Google Cloud introduced several genAI security tools and expertise support to help its customers implement Google’s Secure AI Framework.

The Mandiant AI consulting service aims to help organizations assess the security of their AI pipelines and test AI defense and response with red teaming. Mandiant will also help customers identify and implement ways to use AI to streamline investigative capabilities.

The launch also includes tool previews like Notebook Security Scanner for visibility to open-source software vulnerability exposure and Model Armor for model prompt and response inspection and protection.

CrowdStrike extends Charlotte AI to next-gen security information and event management (SIEM)

CrowdStrike announced its Falcon next-generation SIEM for AI-native security operations centers (SOCs). As part of the enhancements, the vendor expanded the use cases of its genAI security analyst tool — Charlotte AI.

Charlotte AI now is available for all data in the vendor’s next-gen SIEM, which allows analysts to ask any question of Falcon data in the Falcon platform in plain language, including product documentation or Knowledge Bases.

The tool also can correlate related context into a single incident and generate a large language model (LLM) powered incident summary.

In addition, CrowdStrike unveiled the new out-of-the-box promptbooks for the most common analyst workflows with options for custom prompts.

IBM embeds security in AI Deployments

IBM introduced several initiatives to help customers navigate AI use with security as a core element.

The company added the IBM X-Force Red Testing Services to its Consulting Cybersecurity services, designed to test the security of genAI applications, MLSecOps pipelines and AI models from an attacker's perspective.

In addition, IBM plans to extend its data security and identity and access management capabilities from Security Guardium and Security Verify products to protect the sensitive data used in AI deployments.