'Cooking' Artificial Intelligence for Bitdefender 2016

Although the term artificial intelligence has been recently associated with technological innovation in various industries, we’re still far from creating a fully self-aware consciousness bent on world domination.

For the past couple of years, rapid progress has been registered in creating algorithms able to quickly find patterns in large amounts of data or even express creativity. We’ve seen machine learning algorithms that can create recipes that combine flavors more creatively than experience chefs. Although chefs are not yet in danger of losing their jobs, it does show that artificial intelligence algorithms can feed us, not only enslave us.

The new Bitdefender 2016 successfully introduces the security-centric artificial intelligence technology – or machine learning algorithms – we’ve been developing since 2009. Over six years we perfected and “cooked” these algorithms to correctly identify unknown threats with over 99.99% accuracy. Granted, they might not come up with the perfect duck-roast recipes, but they’re highly skilled at plugging online threats.

Applying Artificial Intelligence in Security

Machine learning algorithms can be used on any type of data, and applying them to security to boost detection and reveal new or unknown threats is something that’s going to proactively combat infections and security breaches.

A major benefit of using machine learning in security is that these algorithms can be fed all information we have on current malware so that it can learn to spot similar behavior in new or unknown malware. The ability of machine learning algorithms to extract malware features and use that knowledge to identify never-before-seen threats gives it a unique advantage over traditional security mechanisms.

Although it’s a bit far-fetched to compare its current intelligence to a child’s, over the past nine years we’ve taught these algorithms everything we know about security so they can crawl the internet on their own and fight unknown treats with minimal supervision.

Because malware samples and online threats have increased to staggering numbers – more than 140 million unique malware samples in 2014 alone – using machine learning to automatically and accurately pinpoint each of these threats has become not only advantageous, but also mandatory.

To make these algorithms instantly respond to new threats that lurk on the Internet, we’ve tied them to our cloud infrastructure – and Bitdefender 2016, of course – so they instantly react to newborn threats in a matter of seconds, globally. It can not only identify threats from far-reaching locations, but it can also protect all users connected to the Bitdefender cloud – in a matter of milliseconds – once a new threat has been discovered. For instance, imagine safeguarding users everywhere against malicious or fraudulent URLs in only a matter of seconds after they have been discovered.

To continue with the cooking analogy, it’s like finding out that a restaurant in China came up with a new method for cooking duck pancakes and instantly having a bite for yourself even if you’re in New York or Paris.

The Major Benefit

Although there’s more than one major benefit to using machine learning algorithms in security, the most important one is that it timely identifies threats born anywhere in the world and instantly protects all users from it. With Bitdefender 2016, new or unknown threats will be swiftly identified and users will be instantly protected.

It’s like having your master chef in your kitchen 24/7 always coming up with some new and interesting recipes that will both keep you healthy and give you the tastes you crave for each meal.