Bring data protection, cloud and AI into harmony

Balancing data protection, cloud and AI – AI and cloud need each other to evolve. This interaction is currently still being hampered by data protection concerns. A new approach solves this problem by bringing AI directly into the cloud environment instead of transferring sensitive data to AI services.

The use of AI (artificial intelligence) is still not without controversy. Many people have concerns, especially with regard to the necessary protection for data that is to be analyzed by the AI. And laws also restrict possible progress in this area. According to the digital association Bitkom, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is increasingly forcing companies to stop innovation projects because they cannot comply with the legal data protection requirements.

AI and cloud need each other

The AI, however, needs data in order to be able to develop further. More specifically, machine learning requires training, testing, and validating models.

Looked at the other way around, cloud security can hardly do without AI anymore. The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) emphasizes: “The ability to learn at the speed that AI produces makes it extremely important to prioritize discovering the potential ways in which AI can both support security and define ways in which it can standardization can be designed around their proper use.”

Bring the AI to the cloud

Of course, the AI can now also perform the necessary analysis on obfuscated data streams if simple fields such as usernames and IP addresses have been hashed to protect personal data. However, there is another approach to solving the dilemma: the AI could come into the cloud environment, i.e. directly to the data to be analyzed. In this way, the sensitive data would no longer have to be transmitted to AI services.

Best Practice: BlueVoyant

The so-called BlueVoyant Modern SOC provides a best practice example of this approach. SOC stands for Security Operation Center – this is where the security-relevant information from endpoints, networks and clouds is evaluated, signs of incidents are searched for and reactions are initiated. The concrete product BlueVoyant Modern SOC combines managed services from the security provider BlueVoyant with the Azure Sentinel and XDR functions from Microsoft via 365 Defender and Azure Defender. It offers Microsoft users a combined cyber security solution – directly in their Azure Sentinel environment.

BlueVoyant allows its customers to keep their customer data in their own Azure Sentinel environments with the BlueVoyant Modern SOC. The security algorithms come with the cloud data and not the cloud data with the security solutions. The security-relevant cloud data is evaluated directly in the customer’s cloud environment. Such procedures can be an enormous relief and harmony for cloud data protection.

Source: Cloudcomputing Insider