The cybersecurity industry has witnessed several major transformations over the past few decades, whether it be the evolution of SOC, the advent of numerous endpoint and network security technologies, or the growing significance of cybersecurity professionals. We are ripe for yet another sea change in cybersecurity with the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) across different aspects of security workflows.
The Challenges with the Current Crop of Security AI Tools
As the industry comes to grips with the potential of AI-enabled security use cases, a wide variety of approaches have emerged. While many legacy tools promise to add a layer of AI assistance to their existing capabilities, others are testing the waters with rudimentary AI security chatbots and agents. However, this wild west of the burgeoning AI era has forced the entire security community to rethink the way they operate. Amidst the fog of this chaotic transformation, certain clear hurdles have emerged, including:
- Inconsistent AI Capabilities Across Tools. The landscape of cybersecurity tools currently presents a patchwork of AI capabilities, leading to inconsistent levels of performance and integration across different platforms. This disparity can create significant challenges for security teams, as they must navigate and manage a suite of tools that do not seamlessly communicate or operate on the same level of intelligence. The lack of uniformity in AI functionalities can hinder the efficiency of threat detection and response, complicating workflows and potentially leaving gaps in defense mechanisms. Such inconsistency underscores the need for a more integrated approach, where AI capabilities are unified across tools to ensure a cohesive and robust cybersecurity strategy.
- Restrictions in AI Models. While investments in AI have soared, most security vendors are limited by their adherence to a single type of Large Language Model (LLM) chosen to power their AI features. This means your security teams may not always be able to deploy the most advanced or appropriate AI technologies available for their specific use cases, thereby impeding their ability to effectively predict, detect, and respond to threats.
- Limited AI Use Cases for Security Automation. The application of AI in security automation has been lackluster, with most tools limited to basic automation for a small number of predefined scenarios. Additionally, there is a lack of context-aware actioning capabilities across third-party security and IT tools. This means that your shiny new AI-powered security tool might not add much value to your security teams as they still have to deal with the complexity of tool sprawl, data and technology silos, and cognitive load from context switching.
The Origins of Cyware Quarterback
From its inception to becoming the leading provider of threat intelligence management, security orchestration and automation, and cyber fusion solutions, Cyware has delivered numerous innovative technologies to help secure its enterprise customers and network members (across MSSPs, ISACs/ISAOs, CERTs).
From day one, the Cyware team has driven towards a future where cybersecurity teams can rely on these advanced technologies to gain an edge over adversaries and simplify their workflows. With the rise of generative AI in the last couple of years, the Cyware team has worked tirelessly to push the boundaries of what’s possible with the use of AI for cyber defense.
The outcome is a strategic innovation in the form of Cyware Quarterback, a simple-to-use AI-powered interface that will provide organizations with a way to efficiently perform actions on their security infrastructure.
Cyware Quarterback was born from a commitment to provide security professionals with a platform that not only uses AI to boost the capabilities of Cyware’s existing product portfolio but also serves as a unified AI layer on any organization's set of disparate cybersecurity tools to assist in complex decisions and effective actions. By integrating cutting-edge AI technology, Quarterback enables teams to maximize their efficiency, improve decision-making, and accelerate response times.
How Quarterback Stands Out From Other AI Tools
Cyware Quarterback is not just another AI chatbot or a limited set of AI features in an existing product. It is designed from the ground up as the only AI platform in the cybersecurity industry designed to scale, optimize, and accelerate an organization’s security team’s effectiveness to reduce risks.
- Scaling Analyst Experience. Unlike other AI-enabled security tools, Quarterback is highly focused on improving analyst experience across the board. Security analysts across all key functions, such as SOC, threat intelligence, incident response, vulnerability management, and threat hunting, will benefit from enhanced decision-making with deep contextual insights Quarterback provides. It eliminates the need for analysts to spend hours learning the query languages for different tools and understanding the intricacies of various interfaces. Right from fetching the necessary data to taking the right mitigation actions, Quarterback acts as the smart AI advisor serving beside human analysts to drastically improve their daily workflows, while keeping the control in their hands.
- Democratizing AI Access. Cyware Quarterback sits at the center of the value chain as a unified AI-enabled security fabric. It is purpose-built to democratize AI access, enabling security teams to perform actions such as investigation and hunting, policy management, threat quarantine, case escalation, and more. Quarterback is built on 400+ automation connectors that have been battle-tested by Cyware’s customers over the years. This enables the execution of 4k+ pre-trained actions, allowing security teams to take AI actions in third-party security and IT stack through reusable and composable playbooks. Moreover, Quarterback offers the flexibility for security teams to expand their actions beyond the pre-trained actions with additional custom actions. This sets it apart from all the other offerings that only provide actioning capabilities on their native stack, while they have limited or no actioning capabilities on third-party tools.
- Flexibility to Use Diverse LLMs. The field of Generative AI is rapidly evolving, with numerous general-purpose LLMs and application-specific models in the works from both proprietary and open-source providers. As each LLM brings its own strengths and weaknesses, it is crucial to apply the right model for a particular use case to achieve the desired outcomes. AI models should be an enabler, not a restriction. While most other tools are limited to the use of a single chosen LLM, Cyware has taken a radically different approach by making Quarterback model-agnostic, giving security teams the choice to leverage any of the leading LLMs (from OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic, and others), or even bring their own model trained for their specific use cases.
- Improving Decision-Making. Quarterback significantly enhances security decision-making by performing real-time interpretation of threat data to provide prompt suggestions for taking apt mitigation actions. This helps fill skill gaps and guide analysts through various scenarios to enable a consistent and effective threat response. Taking this further, promptbooks in Quarterback encapsulate frequently used prompt sequences for a seamless single-click execution. Additionally, through its deep integration within Cyware’s products, Quarterback automatically identifies areas where its AI capabilities can be applied to take quick actions. It highlights AI hotspots, which list relevant prompt suggestions, to help analysts take action on threat data without requiring context switching. Altogether, these smartly designed interactions make Quarterback the MVP for your security teams.
The Tipping Point
As organizations increasingly look to adopt AI in their security operations, Cyware is building a solid foundation for an AI-driven security future. By centralizing AI capabilities across a single platform, Cyware Quarterback seeks to offer an integrated, more powerful solution that overcomes the inconsistencies, restrictions, and limited use cases often encountered with other tools. This innovative approach not only enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of cybersecurity teams but also sets a new benchmark for future security technologies. By empowering security teams with integrated, efficient tools, we can help ensure organizations adapt swiftly and effectively to the evolving threat landscape, proactively outpacing malicious adversaries.
Guest blog courtesy of Cyware. Read more Cyware guest blogs and news here. Regularly contributed guest blogs are part of MSSP Alert’s sponsorship program.