LIVE FROM SECURE TOMORROW, ADASTRAL PARK: A trio of BT executives explored AI adoptions in a fast-evolving threat landscape at a media roundtable, highlighting use cases that span data processing to quantum cryptography.

Tris Morgan, MD at BT Security (pictured, centre left), said many of its clients are “still trying to find ways to best use AI across their workforces”, from potentially deploying the technology to improve customer service or “help better spot and defend against threats”.

Morgan explained: “What we are seeing today is the rapid uptake in adversaries using AI in terms of greater personalisation in phishing emails, or the proliferation of AI bots,” the latter of which are utilised by bad actors to find weaknesses via device scanning,

He cited the landscape of cyberattack “is absolutely vast now”.

Meanwhile, BT Business CEO Bas Burger (pictured, left) stated the progressive nature of cyberthreats is very often holding businesses back in implementing new technologies, which has a spill-over effect in terms of growth and competition.

Gabriela Sjoman, MD of research and network strategy (pictured, centre right), observed the operator has seen “increasingly more and more attacks by the day”, emphasising the methods used in cyberattacks are also increasing and are becoming more complex.

“To stay ahead, we need to understand current and future technologies both in the type of threats and in the opportunity to defend,” adding it narrows its research focus on detection and response.

Cutting-edge
Sjoman explained the group has been looking at AI and quantum to keep up with cyberthreat developments and it has “a competitive advantage against many when it comes to looking at the use of AI and developing tools for detection, because we have so much data”.

“There’s hardly any other player with this amount of data. All of these models, they learn from data that goes through the network”, the technologist said as she opened up on how the data is then used to predict and identify “the type of attacks and where the attacks will be”.

Sjoman added BT is also using generative AI to scan through “thousands of internal and external documents” to visualise attacks and facilitate the work of analysts.

“We also tend to think [the deployment of] quantum is so far away, but quantum is not new and has been around for a hundred years. It’s just now that we are learning about the nature of entanglement and what that means in terms of being able to accelerate computing and many other things.”

BT today (13 September) also announced a tie-up with Toshiba and US-based data centre and internet provider Equinix to deliver the UK’s first “dedicated quantum secure connectivity services” between two facilities.

The operator also inked a quantum deal with banking giant HSBC in 2023.