Kasia Hanson, Global Senior Director, Security Ecosystem Development and Partnerships at Intel looks ahead to the future of AI in security.
I lead our global ecosystem development strategy, go-to-market and partnerships within Intel’s Security Center of Excellence.
I collaborate with our partners across physical security and cybersecurity to develop solutions and create strategies based on Intel technologies, and I help them scale and sell more of their products with Intel.
Since joining Intel in 2000, I’ve covered nearly every aspect of technology, including data center solutions, storage, AI, cybersecurity, client computing, and network and edge technologies.
During my tenure I’ve also been fortunate to work with our partners and end users, helping them to boost revenue and scale results with their Intel-based products.
At the heart of my career is a passion for helping people.
When I was only a teenager, I began learning that collaborating with people was one of my strengths.
Then in my early 20s, when I was working as an admin partner to an executive in the healthcare industry, the sales VP approached me and said I belonged in sales. I was scared to death, but I took the leap.
Today, I want to be more than a sales leader.
I want to channel my passion for creating and connecting ecosystems into delivering the best solutions in the world for our partners – and see the results they achieve.
The icing on the cake is that I’ve helped to create a safer world. That drives me forward and it’s at the heart of what I do every day.
Servant leadership, equity and diversity are also guiding forces in my career.
Through the many retreats and conferences I’ve attended, I’ve learned the concept of servant leadership from fantastic motivational leaders and I’ve adopted this approach in my own career.
I strive to achieve a mission rather than focusing on my own goals.
As a result, I’ve had the pleasure of learning from my amazing Intel colleagues and talented peers in the security industry.
In terms of fostering equity and diversity – in the security space and the technology industry at large – I was thrilled to join the Security Industry Association (SIA) Women in Security Forum many years ago, serving as the forum leader for two years.
Together, we launched the WISF Power 100 list to showcase talent and leadership. In partnership with ASIS, we hosted the inaugural Security LeadHer event in 2023.
These are a few ways I’m using my voice and resources to help women advance their careers in security, which is the biggest highlight of my career.
One other important aspect of my career is continual learning and growth. I remain curious about the direction of security in our world and how emerging technologies can impact it.
For example, I’m fascinated by how AI is impacting every aspect of our personal and professional lives and keeping up with AI’s evolution presents an exciting challenge.
It’s moving like a freight train and changing fast.
While I’ve heard the term “AI washing,” which is defined as applying AI to everything, I believe it can be a powerful tool when used to solve a specific business problem.
AI is unlocking intelligence from droves of data that historically was unused or could not be used due to lack of capabilities or cost.
It’s driving a shift within the industry back to edge computing – moving computational power closer to where data is generated such as buildings, machines, vehicles and other devices like security cameras.
AI has matured to the point where it’s moving beyond training in large data centers and clouds to inference in the real world at the edge.
According to IDC, over 56% of enterprises are planning to deploy AI at the edge within a year.
As inference becomes increasingly distributed, the distinction between cloud and edge will blur.
This will result in the industry’s need to continue to evolve and keep up with their customers’ needs, as well as adoption and business outcomes.
AI strategies will likely employ a hybrid approach, combining lightweight, real-time insight at the edge with deeper context within the cloud.
A shift from today’s advanced data analytics to automated decision making is also probable, as Gartner expects that at least 50% of edge computing deployments will involve machine learning by 2026.
This will lead to “self-healing” systems that help circumvent talent shortages and brittle supply chains while opening net-new revenue streams.
Of course, AI is not without its challenges, which include:
We need to take a comprehensive approach to these challenges, ensuring that we lower risks as we strive to optimize AI’s benefits.
As things stand today, AI will evolve into new types of workloads that help advance both business and security outcomes.
Software and infrastructure capabilities will continue to change and grow.
Yet security threats will, too – both in number and complexity. As Frank Dickson, Group Vice President of Security and Trust at IDC was quoted as saying: “Complexity is the enemy of security.”
AI must be able to keep up with new attacks that emerge in a world where every product, connection and associate can create a security vulnerability.
A recent Crowdstrike threat report indicated that “adversaries continue to accelerate – the time to move from an initially compromised host to another within an organization was only 62 min in 2023.
While we see a rise in AI in security, there is a human element behind most of today’s attacks.
Adversaries are moving away from malware and malicious attachments and toward more subtle and effective methods such as credential phishing and social engineering.
With stolen identities, the adversary can log in with legitimate credentials, now among the fastest and most common ways for them to gain access.”
Insights like that contribute to my perspective that AI’s ability to support cyber-physical security will become a more critical focus area for the industry.
The broad adoption of the internet of things (IoT) and the industrial internet of things (IIoT) has created an interconnected ecosystem of physical and cyber systems using AI, blurring boundaries and intertwining physical security and cybersecurity.
This interconnected ecosystem impacts operational technology (OT) systems, such as physical access control and security systems, and as a byproduct, physical security operators and teams.
Understanding the role these teams can play in improving physical security and access control environments will become crucial as customers demand it in response to increased attacks.
Security has always been at the core of computer vision developments, using analytics to deliver a variety of use cases for physical security such as intrusion and threat detection, access control, people identity and perimeter protections.
Leveraging AI will help enable enhanced threat detection, predictive capabilities, automation, advanced behavioral analysis, integration with IoT devices, risk management, compliance and adaptive security measures.
AI is also leading the security industry into a business intelligence capability far beyond what we have seen in the past.
The estimated one billion cameras on the planet today can create increased value that expands the role and importance of the security practitioner.
Now is the time to create outcomes and use cases that tap into security’s ability to contribute to business intelligence and value discussions.
There are use cases for AI analytics from machine learning to generative AI, which are enabling innumerable business outcomes and productivity improvements.
These use cases contribute to why AI is becoming a core part of every business strategy.
A recent McKinsey study confirms that AI spending is not slowing down – it’s expected to exceed $300 billion by 2026. At public companies, 58% of CEOS are investing in AI.
In addition to the critical role AI plays in the security industry, helping to reduce risk, improve privacy and remediate threats faster, it is also capable of accelerating digital transformation in nearly every industry.
By applying multi-modal and multi-model applications using AI, factories are adapting production in minutes, healthcare diagnoses are identified with greater accuracy and speed and retail can expand sales with greater intelligence to support the consumer shopping experience including safety and security – all faster than ever before.
Regarding the journey the industry is on with AI, there is no set destination at this point, but Intel can help define the course we take together.
I like to use this as an example: when I drive, I want to look at the directions for where I am going, so I know the turns and potential barriers or delays as I travel to my destination.
The same goes for the journey of AI.
We need to understand it, its impacts and uses within an environment. You can set a strategy and evolve it over time.
As customer requirements advance, Intel remains committed to bringing AI everywhere across the AI continuum.
This includes driving performance at scale, open standards and software built into every platform with advanced processes that are used responsibly and keep sensitive data secured.
We also want to help customers and partners accelerate innovation with our broad AI software portfolio and our comprehensive compute portfolio of CPUs, GPUs and accelerators.
Intel’s confidential computing technologies help ensure security regardless of where a solution is deployed – from edge to cloud, data center to client.
Here are a few examples of Intel innovations coming to ISC West:
OpenVINO: For many years, we have collaborated with our ecosystem to deliver optimized hardware and software solutions that provide choice, cost improvements and performance at the edge.
In 2018, we launched Intel® OpenVINO, an AI inferencing software tool, which enables the software community to leverage open-sourced tools to develop advanced analytics and respond to new use cases faster than ever.
We saw it leveraged during the pandemic and it’s continuing to make an impact during the proliferation of AI.
In fact, it’s simplifying AI development while unifying the cloud-to-edge hybrid AI continuum.
Intel® Geti™: Our computer vision platform for developing AI models helps enterprise teams teach machines to do visual tasks.
The Intel Geti platform works with most AI frameworks and exports trained computer vision AI that can run on a full range of devices, including laptops, industrial PCs, servers and data centers in the cloud.
Intel® SceneScape: This software platform extends beyond vision-based AI to realize spatial awareness from sensor data.
Intel SceneScape transforms data from many sensor types to create and provide live updates to a four-dimensional digital twin of a physical space.
Digital twins can be applied to security use cases to review past analytics, track what is happening in the present and make predictive decisions for the future.
This solution can be integrated into your existing security system for a greater return on investment and it is customizable to meet specific security needs.
For example, it can connect to use case-specific sensors or incorporate a custom imported vision model.
While Intel SceneScape addresses current challenges in the market, it sets a new standard of innovation to meet the security demands of tomorrow.
Intel® RealSense ID™: This is an on-device solution that combines an active depth sensor with vision AI designed to deliver secure, accurate and privacy-preserving facial authentication.
With state-of-the-art anti-spoofing and facial authentication software, Intel® RealSense ID™ delivers a one in a million false-acceptance rate and <0.1% spoof acceptance rate.
Combined with our easy-to-use SDK, the Intel RealSense ID F455 peripheral and F450 module allows for quick integration with an access control solution.
In December, Intel hosted the AI Everywhere event to demonstrate how Intel is indeed “Bringing AI Everywhere.”
CEO Pat Gelsinger told analysts: “We’re going to build AI into every product that we build – whether it’s a client, whether it’s an edge platform for retail and manufacturing and industrial use cases. Whether it’s an enterprise data center.”
He went on to say, “We firmly believe in this idea of democratizing AI, opening the software stack and creating and participating with this broad industry ecosystem that’s emerging.
“It’s a great opportunity and one that Intel is well-positioned to participate in.”
I would add that along with our ecosystem partners, we’re laser-focused on delivering advanced AI offerings that enable security practitioners and integrators to deliver valuable outcomes for security and beyond.
Also, Intel is leading the industry to bring hybrid AI into the mainstream, with a focus on simplicity and cost of ownership.
One significant way we’re doing this is by offering a new commercial software platform, which has evolved from years of edge AI experience.
It enables enterprises to build, deploy, run, manage and scale edge and AI solutions on standard hardware with cloud-like simplicity.
The platform is built on an open-systems basis, which means there’s no need to switch vendors or commit to using the whole platform if only one component is needed.
It also provides cloud-to-edge infrastructure management software, AI platform software and tools for cloud-to-edge AI and commercial-ready, vertical-specific solutions – all of which help businesses to start taking advantage of hybrid AI with increased ease and speed.
I think we will be talking about AI for a very long time as it continues to evolve. I see similarities between this journey and the one associated with the internet.
Over time, the internet changed how most of us communicate, interact and ultimately live every day.
I believe AI will improve many areas of our lives – not just in security, but in healthcare, transportation, sports, retail experiences and manufacturing – so it’s worth discussing.
Yet the discussion is not complete unless we address the ethical and responsible use of AI.
For AI to be responsible, it needs to support an overall framework for increased societal trust through a comprehensive approach involving people, processes, systems, data and algorithms.
At Intel, we’re committed to advancing AI responsibly by establishing diverse development teams; using rigorous, multidisciplinary review processes; and collaborating with industry partners to mitigate potentially harmful uses of AI.
AI will continue to be a powerful tool that helps advance security, but keeping it secure, selecting products that are secure by design and developing and using AI responsibly are critical as we move into the next level of digital transformation.
You can feel confident in Intel‘s Security-First Pledge and that we actively work to deliver security without sacrificing performance with the Intel products you use.
We invite you to view the latest Intel Product Assurance report at Intel.com/Security and our Security-First Pledge.
We look forward to seeing you at ISC West and invite you to visit the Intel Demo Room during ISC West (Titian 2201B) where we will showcase AI-based Intel product innovations and solution from our ecosystem partners such as Epic.IO, meldCX, ISS, VSBLTY and WaitTime.
This article was originally published in the April edition of Security Journal Americas. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.