Wei Lu, department chair for computer science, has been looking into how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to benefit society and help improve web security.
Lu, who has been researching AI for around 23 years, shared how he believes AI can help keep people safe and secure.
“I started to do research on artificial intelligence and cyber security in 2002,” Lu said. “That’s a long time ago. My PhD is about cybersecurity, specifically about intrusion detection.”
Lu went on to explain how and why he finds AI to be a useful tool.
“We use AI because artificial intelligence is capable of reconstructing scenarios,” Lu said. “You can rebuild the attacking scenario and we can use AI to do it. Artificial intelligence can be used to find patterns and then we use those patterns to try to rebuild or reconstruct the whole scenario.”
Lu also explained where specifically he thinks AI would be the most useful.
“Right now, I think the most useful place to apply AI for cybersecurity is in hospitals,” Lu said. “But it wasn’t always like that. 20 years ago, hospitals didn’t have these kinds of issues. If you think about 20 years ago, the hospitals had their medical devices and were fairly isolated. There were hardly any devices until the internet, so there were no security issues. Right now, it’s totally changed because if you go to a hospital there are a lot of devices. They are connected to the internet.”
Eric Brown, a student of Lu’s who said he wants to pursue a career in cybersecurity and computer science, shared his input on AI and how it is currently being used.
“The thing with healthcare is that it deals with patient lives,” Brown said. “So it’s a lot different from, say, a factory that just manufactures stuff. That’s why the hospitals really are one of the big targets for cyber activity.”
According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), AI has a large purpose going forward and can be useful to help people safely navigate the web.
CISA’s website outlines how the agency will use AI going forward.
“CISA will use AI-enabled software tools to strengthen cyber defense and support its critical infrastructure mission. CISA’s adoption of AI will ensure responsible, ethical, and safe use—consistent with the Constitution and all applicable laws and policies, including those addressing federal procurement, privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties,” according to the agency’s website.
Lu, said he strongly believes that AI can be successfully implemented within the field of cybersecurity, reiterated how important Artificial Intelligence really is for protecting web security, especially in hospitals.
“Right now it’s really a big deal for cybersecurity in hospitals,” Lu said. “The reason is because we have so many more medical devices connected with the computer networks. When we started this kind of research more than twenty years ago it was not like this. Right now, it’s applied widely in hospitals. In the past five years, there’s been a lot of targeted attacks.”
Chloe Erno can be contacted at
cerno@kscequinox.com
