Microsoft GPT4's Newest Chat Tool: Fighting Cyberattacks

Microsoft upped the ante in the never-ending arms race between hackers and the cybersecurity experts trying to keep them at bay on Tuesday by announcing a new cybersecurity "co-pilot" designed to help businesses track and defend against hacking attempts. This announcement was part of Microsoft's rapid campaign to incorporate new artificial intelligence technology into its wide range of products.

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It's the latest shot in Microsoft's competition with Google and other tech giants to rule the rapidly expanding "generative" AI space, though it's still not clear whether the flurry of product introductions, executive pronouncements, and demos will have a profound impact that industry leaders are claiming.

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The tool expands Microsoft's line-up of generative AI tools, which are using algorithms developed using trillions of lines of online content as training data. The algorithms can write text summaries, computer code, and relatively complicated human discussions. The application, known as Microsoft Security Copilot, compiles information from a company's own computers and other databases of hacking risks. Workers may then ask straightforward questions about the types of hacking attempts that are occurring on their network.

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According to Microsoft, the tool will simplify the work of cybersecurity experts and enable security experts to be hired despite having less specific abilities.

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"Cybersecurity in general is the major challenge of our times, "Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated in an interview.  "Can we increase the analyst's speed by 10 times? Can we introduce a new analyst and modify their learning curve? ”

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Meanwhile, generative AI chatbots are already being exploited by hackers to create attack-ready code, according to cybersecurity research firm Check Point Research. Such tools enable users to create hacking software without the need for their own technical expertise, just as Microsoft's tool makes it simpler for employees to defend the systems of their companies.

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Charlie Bell, executive vice president of security at Microsoft, asserted that innovation on the shadowy side would always exist. Engineers inside the corporation are attempting to break into their own goods, he claimed, "those who are trying to break it before anyone else attempts to figure it out."

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Since the general public, Wall Street investors, and the firm's customers have developed a tremendous interest in the technology, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, and other major tech companies are scrambling to incorporate generative AI into more of their products. Microsoft announced a multibillion-dollar partnership with OpenAI earlier this year. OpenAI is a smaller business that helped begin the most recent wave of AI by going public with its ChatGPT chatbot and DALL-E picture generator. Since then, it has added ChatGPT-based technology to its Bing search engine, Word and Excel productivity suites, and cloud services it sells to other companies.

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Google, a longtime rival of Microsoft and the clear market leader in AI technology is now scrambling to release competitive products utilizing its own generative AI technology. Notwithstanding its partnership with Microsoft, OpenAI has offered access to its technology directly to a number of businesses, including some of Microsoft's main rivals, such as Salesforce and Zoom.

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Many companies have a nightmare with cybersecurity. In recent years, the frequency of devastating cyberattacks has increased, and ransomware attacks, in which hackers block a company's access to its systems and demand a fee to unlock it, have brought down hospitals, companies, and entire municipal administrations. More knowledgeable cybersecurity personnel are urgently needed by businesses and governments to assist in monitoring and defending against hacking threats.

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Microsoft promotes its Copilot tool as a technique to assist staff in more effectively identifying the risks that are most dangerous and addressing them. Both Microsoft's own security-focused AI algorithms and OpenAI's ChatGPT technology are used by the program.

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It's not new to use AI to protect against cyberattacks. It is used by other technologies created by Microsoft and other businesses to go through data and identify the most probable dangers. AI is another tool that hackers employ to increase their chances of accessing a particular computer network.

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Nonetheless, the company claims that integrating chatbots and generative AI is a significant improvement over what businesses and governments can now access, and will make cybersecurity tasks simpler and more accessible to a wider range of people. Reverse engineering dangerous computer code, for instance, is a key ability used by cyber experts to determine what it does and where it comes from. In a video demonstration, Microsoft showed how entering computer code into Copilot would produce a visual flowchart that even a non-programmer could understand.

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"A lot of noise is coming from the direction of the defense. Assailants' origins are extremely difficult to discern," according to Vasu Jakkal, corporate vice president of Microsoft security. It will not only travel back in time and say, "Hey, this was a type of attack that happened, and here is a comparable attack," but it will also assist you in discovering new attacks.