As artificial intelligence technologies continue to rapidly evolve, Federal agencies are looking to upskill their AI workforce to keep pace with emerging cybersecurity threats.
At the Axonius Adapt 2024: Reimagining Our Federal Cyber Future event in Washington on Tuesday, Federal officials explained that cybersecurity employees with more experience working with AI tools will have a leg up on those that do not.
“I don’t know if it’ll be next year or a couple of years from now, but I think the pendulum is starting to swing back to the human integration of cyber,” said Josh Reiter, the deputy principal cyber advisor at the U.S. Navy. “There are two prevailing narratives: one is that AI will replace people, and the other is that AI will not replace people. But people who are better with AI will replace people who are worse with AI.”
“I think what you’re going to have is a greater human-machine pairing,” Reiter added. “And I think that will come with a sweep back to addressing the huge – anywhere between half a million to 700,000 – worker shortage within the cyber community and somehow addressing that with a combination of AI.”
Addressing that worker shortage, he said, will be done with a combination of AI “somewhat” reducing the need for humans, as well as increased training and recruiting. In doing so, he said he hopes the Federal government can “recruit some of the best and the brightest to keep them engaged and keep them growing and mentally entertained throughout their career.”
As far as keeping pace with adversaries, Reiter stressed that “every positive that we have in terms of automation and speed of decision also comes with the liability of being an increasing attack surface that we have to protect.”
Similarly, Davon Tyler, the chief information security officer and director of the Enterprise Cybersecurity Group at the Department of Education’s Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA), noted that the rapidly evolving AI field is “a scary place to be” as a cyber defender.
“AI is a lost ship, and it’s still turning. I think next year that ship will still be turning,” Tyler said. “There’s a defender who will have to figure out how to rapidly defend against software that’s being deployed that we’ve never seen before.”
“So, what we’re going to do is really enforce more quality,” Tyler added. “There’s going to be more people that can leverage the tools – what do we do with those people? How can we make them better at their jobs? I think we’re going to spend a lot of time doing that next year.”
Dean Sysman, the co-founder and CEO of Axonius, agreed with the Federal officials, saying, “I think the human ability to utilize the tools that we have, the human ability to leverage the technology that we built up is definitely the under theme I think of every year, right?”
“I think we should be thinking and talking more about how we help people utilize their current and future technologies more and more effectively,” Sysman concluded.
