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Artificial intelligence in cyber security: research advances, challenges, and opportunities

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Abstract

In recent times, there have been attempts to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in a broad range of cyber security applications. Therefore, this paper surveys the existing literature (comprising 54 papers mainly published between 2016 and 2020) on the applications of AI in user access authentication, network situation awareness, dangerous behavior monitoring, and abnormal traffic identification. This paper also identifies a number of limitations and challenges, and based on the findings, a conceptual human-in-the-loop intelligence cyber security model is presented.

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Notes

  1. Cloud adoption risk report 2019 (pdf). https://mscdss.ds.unipi.gr/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Cloud-Adoption-Risk-Report-2019.pdf (2019).

  2. What’s the difference between network security & cyber security? https://www.ecpi.edu/blog/whats-difference-between-network-security-cyber-security (2020).

  3. Ai in cybersecurity-capgemini worldwide. https://www.capgemini.com/news/ai-in-cybersecurity/ (2020).

  4. Ai index 2019 report (pdf). https://hai.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj10986/f/ai_index_2019_report.pdf (2020).

  5. Enterprise immune system-darktrace. https://www.darktrace.com/en/products/enterprise/ (2019).

  6. Invincea launches x-as-a-service managed security. https://www.eweek.com/security/invincea-launches-x-as-a-service-managed-security (2020).

  7. Congnigo-infosecurity magazine. https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/directory/cognigo/ (2019).

  8. Speech emotion recognition using semi-supervised learning with ladder networks. In: 2018 First Asian Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII Asia), pp. 1–5 (2018).

  9. Knowledge-directed artificial intelligence reasoning over schemas (kairos). https://www.darpa.mil/program/knowledge-directed-artificial-intelligence-reasoning-over-schemas (2020).

  10. Darpa robotics challenge (DRC) using human-machine teamwork to perform disasterresponse with a humanoid robot. https://apps.dtic.mil/docs/citations/AD1027886 (2020).

  11. Training ai to win a dogfight. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2019-05-08 (2020).

  12. Cyborg super soldiers: Us army report reveals vision for deadly ‘machine humans’ with infrared sight, boosted strength and mind-controlled weapons by 2050. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7738669/US-Military-scientists-create-plan-cyborg-super-soldier-future.html (2019).

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61872038). This work of K.-K. R. Choo was supported only by the Cloud Technology Endowed Professorship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer and Communication Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, 100083, China

    Zhimin Zhang, Huansheng Ning, Feifei Shi, Fadi Farha, Yang Xu & Fan Zhang

  2. Beijing Engineering Research Center for Cyberspace Data Analysis and Applications, Beijing, 100083, China

    Huansheng Ning

  3. School of Information Engineering, Xinjiang Institute of Engineering, Xinjiang, China

    Jiabo Xu

  4. Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, 78249-0631, USA

    Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo

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  1. Zhimin Zhang
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Zhang, Z., Ning, H., Shi, F. et al. Artificial intelligence in cyber security: research advances, challenges, and opportunities. Artif Intell Rev 55, 1029–1053 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-021-09976-0

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