Resist the point product sale to advise on AI security

The combination of security tool sprawl and the rising threat sparked by the accelerated spread of artificial intelligence (AI) should create more opportunities for the channel to help users deal with those challenges.

Recent research from deep observability specialist Gigamon underlined the rising threat caused by AI and the need for customers to speed up their response to maintain a strong security posture.

For the channel, the takeaway from the research is to reconsider simply throwing more point products at customer problems and to consider increasing visibility as a means of ensuring they are on top of threats and able to harness the power of the products they have already invested in.

Mark Jow, technical evangelist EMEA at Gigamon, said customers recognised they needed to move faster to deal with emerging AI threats.

“The gulf between people’s stated confidence in their ability to use and apply AI and their confidence in their ability to maintain a robust security posture was completely at odds with what they told us about the number of times they were breached and the number of repeat breaches,” he said.

He added that traditionally different department had acquired products – promoted as the ideal solution by vendors – to solve problems but now faced “tool sprawl” and were looking to the channel to help them gain control. 

“Many organisations are moving in that direction, and many of them recognise that deep observability is a big part of that solution,” said Jow. “But many of them are not moving there quickly enough, and so they’ve got to resist this temptation to keep adding more tools and instead start to focus on putting the foundational platform with deep observability in place across their environment.”

He agreed that AI is both a threat and an opportunity for channel partners that had developed expertise in the area: “If it’s managed, applied, implemented and evolved in the right way, it’s a much bigger opportunity than is a threat.

“But that said, if you don’t start to look at some things differently to the way that you’re looking at security and AI usage today, sooner or later it’s going to be the master and you’re going to be the slave,” he added.

He said the growth of shadow IT around the use of AI tools indicated that trying to block technologies was not the answer. Partners needed to work with customers to make sure they could utilise the latest technologies without expanding risks.

“The last thing that modern organisations want is to take a draconian approach to ‘thou shalt not use’, because for every organisation that does that, there’s another organisation that doesn’t. At some level, someone is gaining competitive edge in doing it – whether that’s productivity, IPR, staff development and so on,” he stated.

Jow said partners that were able to gain insights into a customer’s infrastructure were going to be best placed to provide guidance around risk management:

“I describe it to a lot of channel partners as ‘imagine watching a three-hour Hollywood blockbuster without the sound],” he said. “If it’s a big action [film], you can get the gist as to what’s happening. You might think you know the plot, sense certain conversations people are having by their body language, whether they get shot or not or whether they jump into bed together. But you never know until you have the soundtrack – it’s only when you have the soundtrack can you really discern and define what’s happening.

“In a complex hybrid cloud environment, where AI is coming in, coming out, being used across the organisation, if you haven’t got the soundtrack, you [are in trouble],” he added.