With the rapid rise of technological advancements, one theme consistently rises to the forefront of discussions across industries: the transformative power of artificial intelligence.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the realm of cybersecurity, where the relentless pursuit of innovation is both a necessity and a challenge. The mWISE Conference brought together experts from various fields to explore the potential of AI and the critical need for collaboration between businesses, government agencies and academic institutions.

“From our perspective, we’ve been making heavy use of AI for a long, long time,” said Phil Venables (pictured), chief information security officer for Google Cloud and vice president of Google LLC. “We think the potential for this is huge.”

Venables spoke with theCUBE industry analysts John Furrier, Rebecca Knight and Rob Strechay at the mWISE Conference, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed Google’s vision for AI in cybersecurity and the imperative of securing this groundbreaking technology. (* Disclosure below.)

Harnessing the power of AI in cybersecurity

Google’s journey into generative AI, particularly since inventing the transformer language model in 2018, has opened up new horizons. AI, especially gen AI, has demonstrated its worth in analyzing threats, supporting cybersecurity professionals and automating threat detection. AI has been the foundation of many Google products, including Gmail’s malware and spam filtering and the safe browsing experience in Chrome, according to Venables.

“What we’ve already demonstrated with the ability to take virus total data, Mandiant threat data, Google threat data and use that to analyze threats to support the cybersecurity workforce,” he said. “We’re just at the beginning, and already it’s proving a significant boon to defenders.”

Google is committed to being both bold and responsible in its AI endeavors, with that responsibility encompassing various facets, including security, risk management, compliance and safety, Venables added.

“Our approach to AI is about being bold and responsible,” he said. “That includes many things … but particularly on the security of AI, rather than AI for security.”

The evolving threat landscape demands constant innovation. Despite the increasing threats, budgets for data and security are not growing at the same pace. In this context, AI offers a modernization opportunity, making security more effective and efficient.

“The path to better security is to modernize your technology to a more defendable platform where security is built in, not bolted on,” Venables said.

The importance of the AI supply chain

One of the fascinating topics discussed was the analogy between securing AI and supply chain management. There is a need to know where AI models and data originate, which plays an important part in securing AI supply chain.

Google is actively building an AI platform that encompasses the end-to-end lifecycle of AI, ensuring controls are in place to provide a high degree of security and transparency to organizations using AI.

“You’re going to have the supply chain know where your models are coming from, where your data is, because I could see … that injecting misinformation into an AI could be catastrophic to an organization,” Venables said.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the mWISE Conference:

(* Disclosure: Google Cloud sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Google Cloud nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE