Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a buzzword in recent years, often associated with futuristic technologies like robots and self-driving cars. 

But do you know it plays a significant role in our daily lives? From waking up and checking our smartphones to saying, “Hey Google, play some music, ” AI is quietly working behind the scenes. 

According to this website, the global AI market is projected to overgrow in the coming years. But what exactly is AI? What’s its impact on data protection, and how can you implement AI to safeguard your data? These are fundamental questions that we’ll work out together in this article.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Has this ever happened to you that you are discussing buying a TV with someone, and you open your phone, and out of nowhere, it starts showing you the best deals on purchasing a new TV, and you think, is my phone spying on my conversations to provide me tailored ads? 

Well, my friend, that’s AI for you. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is like having a super-smart friend who can reason, acquire knowledge, and make choices just like people. 

It’s a technology that makes machines extremely intelligent—sometimes too bright, in my opinion—and enables them to follow our instructions, spot patterns, and even forecast outcomes.

It’s like a supercharged brain power that makes video game characters feel real, puts robots to life, and enables your phone to comprehend your voice.

What’s the impact of AI on Data Protection?

The impact of AI on data protection is both good and bad, depending on how it’s being used and by whom. Here’s what it does:

Access control and intelligent authentication

AI can improve authentication processes by analyzing user behavior, context, and historical patterns to determine access rights. 

It can detect unusual login attempts or suspicious user activities, adding an extra layer of security to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data like Google emails you about “a suspicious login attempt” when you log in from a new device.

But it can also be used by attackers to analyze your login behavior and pattern for their malicious schemes.

Powerful data encryption

AI can optimize data encryption processes by determining the most effective encryption algorithms, which right now is AES 256-bit heavy encryption, and managing encryption keys securely. 

It can also assist in identifying and classifying sensitive data to ensure that encryption is applied appropriately, reducing the risk of data leaks or unauthorized access.

Superior vulnerability detection

AI can analyze large volumes of data in real-time and identify patterns that may indicate potential security threats. 

It can detect anomalies and suspicious activities, enabling early detection of cyberattacks or unauthorized access attempts. 

But the same technology can also be used by hackers to start an attack on large organizations storing data of people like you and me.

Automating security-related tasks

AI can automate routine security tasks, such as monitoring and analyzing logs, detecting and blocking suspicious IP addresses, or filtering out spam emails. 

This enables security teams to focus on more complex issues while improving the efficiency and effectiveness of data protection measures.

Incident response in real time

AI-powered systems can monitor network traffic, your behavior, and system logs to identify security breaches as they occur. 

By analyzing and correlating data in real-time, AI can rapidly detect and respond to threats, minimizing the potential damage caused by cyberattacks or data breaches.

How to use AI for Data Protection

Here’s an important question. If AI can be good and bad for your data, How can you fight it’s lousy side and use it for your benefit? Below I have mentioned some tips to improve your data protection using AI.

Recognize your data’s nature

It is essential to have a thorough awareness of your organization’s data landscape before beginning AI adoption. 

List the many forms of data you gather, keep, and process and the potential dangers and regulatory requirements each type of data may be subject to. 

You can use this information to decide which AI tools and techniques are best for your data protection requirements.

Use encryption powered by AI

Strong encryption, a crucial aspect of data protection, can be provided via AI, as I previously said.

Investigate AI-powered encryption methods like differential privacy or homomorphic encryption, which add extra layers of security for sensitive data.

Using AI to Detect and prevent threats

Look for software that can quickly identify risks. You may proactively identify shady activities, illegal access attempts, or unusual behaviors that can point to a security breach by training AI models on historical data and combining real-time monitoring.

Make use of AI for access control

Maintaining data protection requires limiting access to data. Artificial intelligence can play a significant role in this area by offering clever access control techniques. 

Use AI-based authentication and authorization systems to give or restrict access based on user behavior, context, and previous trends. 

AI can dynamically change access control policies by continuously learning from user interactions, reducing the danger of unwanted access.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can AI-powered anomaly detection assist in discovering data access that is not authorized?

The AI program picks up on the typical interactions between authorized users, the system, and the data. The AI system identifies an activity or unauthorized user as anomalous when it dramatically deviates from accepted norms.

What ethical issues come with employing AI to secure data?

By detecting risks and vulnerabilities, AI may increase data protection, but if it is not adequately regulated and supervised, it may also be used to violate people’s privacy rights. To solve these ethical issues, ensuring fairness, explainability, and responsible AI activities is essential.

Wrapping up

AI is a very sharp double-edged sword. If AI can be used to exploit your data, it can also be used to provide military-grade data protection. 

You just need to look for the right tools tailored to your data needs, so always know your data and understand what kind of protection it needs, which you can also detect using AI. 

So, use this powerful tool to your advantage.

Author Bio:

Anas Hassan is a Content Marketer at a leading cybersecurity firm PureVPN. He has vast experience in the field of digital transformation industry. When Anas isn’t blogging, he watches the football games.