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5 Brilliant Ways To Use AI In Networking

January 20, 2018
5:49 AM

Have you ever imagined a network that can make decisions on its own without the intervention of any human?

Well AI can do that for you quite easily. You need to have good knowledge about networks and networking if you intend to use AI to transform them so that they could make their own decisions.

In this article, you will learn how we can use AI to transform the world of online networking.

Some of the approaches discussed in this article are:

Maintaining and protecting networks
AI defined networking technologies for industries
Intelligent Firewalls
The AI-based intrusion detection system
Using AI for phishing detection

With AI, we can design much faster networks that would work on their own.

Using AI in networking

AI can aid in the designing of networks that may seem impossible for humans. These networks would be much advanced and faster than their predecessors.

1. Maintaining & protecting networks

The networks that we see right now are based on various algorithms. Hacking of data and DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks are the major issues several networks are facing.

AI can provide much better solutions to such problems than the algorithms on which many online networks are based.

It can give a better prediction of online traffic by the real-time analysis of the network and can save from DDOS attacks.

This prediction of traffic can be very fruitful for network managers in particular. As on some big events, the networks are burdened due to high traffic. In this way, they would be able to get prepared to channelize that high traffic optimally.

2. AI defined network technologies for industries

With the advancements it offers to network technology, AI can be very useful for many industries.

By using AI in networking, it would be possible to automatically route the traffic between the internet and various private networks which would help us to get faster and secure access to data worldwide.

By using AI designed networking topologies and software we can revolutionize the networks.

For example in the healthcare industry, AI-based networks can be used analyze a large number of documents in a minute or less. This would help doctors to make many accurate and curable decisions for their patients.

3. Intelligent firewalls

The main use of firewalls in any network is to block unauthorized access to those networks.

A static firewall can’t detect any new malware in the network. For this, human intervention is required. Hence, AI-based firewalls fare better in many ways:

AI-based firewalls can provide much more security to your network. It can provide information about any unusual data packet structure.
An AI-based firewall has the tendency to protect your network not only from the known threats but also from new threats.
Its rich forensic analysis provides details about the intrusion & the intruder too at times.
It can also make predictions about future threats to your network. It consists of a smart detection engine that will eliminate the need of any human for the detection of any unknown malware and virus in the network.
The level of security in AI-based firewalls is much higher than other security software.
Intelligent firewalls will make use of statistical clustering to detect malware on any network.
Such firewalls can also make use of behavioral analytics in order to find any change that deviates the network from its normal behavior.

4. AI-based intrusion detection system

Interconnectivity between different devices can open doors for hackers to misuse the resources within a network.

For this reason IDS(Intrusion detection system) is placed within a network to detect potential threats. It uses data acquisition and data screening to get this information for us.

IDS can be classified into 2 types:

Misuse detection system
Anomaly detection system

Misuse Detection System:
It is used to detect the intrusion that matches or relates to any known attack scenarios.

Anomaly detection system:
It is used to detect behavior that is different from the known patterns.

IDS basically provides information about anyone sneaking into our network. The issue is that number of intrusions is increasing daily and it is quite difficult to detect new intrusions.

Since the nature of intrusions are totally signature-based so it becomes quite difficult to detect each of them. But AI-based IDS can do this job for us.

It consists of different models by which the patterns can be recognized. AI can provide IDS that are cost-effective and also won’t consume much energy.

The main advantages of AI-based IDS are:

Flexibility
Adaptability
Pattern recognition
Fast computing
Learning abilities

5. Using AI for phishing detection

Almost 91% of cyber-attacks start with phishing. In such cases, an AI engine can be used to detect such cyber-attacks in real-time.

Such AI engines have the capability of learning about patterns of communication. Then this knowledge will help to detect any anomalous behavior in the communication that leads to phishing attacks and notifies the network administrator and the recipient of that attack.

Final words

Apart from these issues, many other network routing problems can be solved with AI, eliminating the need for any sort of human intervention.

It would be possible to detect cyber-attacks in real-time and save the networks from the loss of valuable data. In this way, we will be able to secure our personal, financial, and sensitive data. Such predictive applications will make our networks and our data sources secure and faster than ever.