Automation will take over day-to-day IT security jobs

Neil Thacker, CISO for EMEA at Netskope.

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Automation is already here and that is not necessarily a bad thing for cyber security professionals.

This is according to Neil Thacker, CISO for EMEA at Netskope, speaking at ITWeb Security Summit 2018, at Vodacom World in Midrand yesterday.

"We have a big skills shortage in terms of cyber security. I know it's no different in South Africa, but I think the global requirement is that by 2020 we will need an additional six million cyber security professionals in our industry.

"At the moment, most of us are already working weekends and evenings to try and catch up and fill that skills shortage but I think we are going to see this becoming even more of a problem moving forward. So we have to start embracing automation and the cybernetics aspect and artificial intelligence," he said.

Thacker was speaking about the concept of 'cybernetics 2020' and how automation, algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) are going to shape businesses going forward and in some cases take over day-to-day IT security jobs.

"Cybernetics is really the clash between humans and machines; typically either how humans have evolved to be more machine-like, but more likely how machines have evolved to become more human-like," he explained.

"If we talk about self-reproducing machines, it sounds a bit crazy, but there has been some research in the last few weeks of people building these machines that can build grid-like systems, typically how we build pathways and passageways, and those of you that deal with neural networks will understand that this is something that is available today."

Thacker said the fact is, automation is already here but will not easily solve infosec or cyber problems without good models and good data. However, he believes AI and automation can be extremely useful in day-to-day IT challenges going forward.

"My ambition is to eradicate social engineering in next few years. I know there are some phishing attacks that are so obvious, trying to get you to click on a link, but I'm thinking of ways that we can use automation and AI to better protect the individual, to stop them from clicking on the link. There are ways of doing it; it's about having good data and putting into place a good data model and being able to identify a specific threat to a specific individual."

He said more automation will also go hand-in-hand with changes that companies can expect from a different kind of workforce, the likes of 'Generation Z' who will work in a completely different way.

"The next generation are thinking faster and they know how to use data more effectively, perhaps, than we do in our generation. But how they use that data and make a business impact is really important moving forward."

He believes the IT skills brought in by Generation Z are actually becoming less important to business, because most organisations are simplifying processes and demands in terms of IT skills.

"They are more focused on the innovators. Moving forward more workers are going to be freelance. They will be working on specific problems and specific challenges and less so on traditional day-to-day IT-related matters. That is primarily because of automation coming into organisations and dealing with those daily tasks; we are already seeing this," he added.