Evaluation of AI-based use cases for enhancing the cyber security defense of small and medium-sized companies (SMEs)

Abstract

Companies are increasingly facing the challenges of a persistent cyber threat landscape. By means of AI, cyber attacks can be efficiently conducted more successful through offensive AI. As for cyber defense, AI can be also utilized against cyber threats (defensive AI). Due to limited resources, especially in small and medium-sized companies (SMEs), there is a need to deploy more effective defensive cyber security solutions. Precisely, the adaptation of AI-based resilient defenses must be driven forward. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to identify and evaluate AI-related use cases with a high impact potential on the cyber security level, while being applicable to SMEs at the same time. In order to reach the research goal, an extensive literature review of several online catalogs, surveys and online platforms was conducted. In conclusion, seven crucial AI-based security features were outlined that are providing a high impact potential to the security level for SMEs. Afterwards, the results are discussed and set into a broader context. Even though AI-based security solutions are providing a large range of advantages, certain challenges and barriers using AI-related security applications are addressed in the paper as well. A high need for usable state of the art AI based cyber security solution for SMEs was identified.