10 Low-Cost (or Free!) Ways to Boost Your Security AI Skills
The following hardware and software options will amplify your know-how about artificial intelligence and how to apply it to security — without busting any budgets.
August 23, 2019
From IT to marketing to HR, artificial intelligence (AI) is making its way throughout the enterprise. For security professionals, learning about the technology and how to apply it can be critical for keeping up with malicious actors and turning security into an asset. The question is how to do so without creating a new section on the "expense" side of the ledger.
The good news: Tools are available that allow virtually anyone with basic software development skills to begin honing their AI chops for a price that ranges from free to a few hundred dollars.
AI security involves many areas of research, says Jason Mancuso, a research scientist at Dropout Labs who spoke at the AI Village at DEF CON. "There is applying AI to security problems," he explains. "There's using AI to enhance red teaming or blue teaming in traditional cybersecurity. Then there's the security of AI itself, which is a totally separate field, and it's concerned with different problems."
While AI research can be conducted on a standard laptop computer, AI research can benefit from a bit of a hardware boost. For this list, we've assembled both hardware aimed at an AI mission as well as software that will help those who are first getting started.
Bear in mind: Just because these options are inexpensive doesn't mean AI is easy to master. That's where online communities, education resources, and local Meetups dedicated to AI can help.
Have you begun the process of adding AI to your security repertoire? Which tools are you using? Let us know in the Comments.
(Image Source: Worawut via Adobe Stock)
Just like TensorFlow was developed at Google for use in internal projects, PyTorch was created primarily by developers at Facebook to build their internal systems. Built around a library called Torch (which deals with placing data in and manipulating tensors), PyTorch adds a Python front end to the library along with significant functionality, including tensor processing using graphical processing units (GPUs) and the creation of extensive neural networks.
PyTorch has been released into the open source environment through a modified BSD license. It now has the commonly used Python front end as well as a lesser-used C++ interface.
PyTorch has some functional overlap with TensorFlow in that they both take a tensor-centric approach to data and its processing. And like TensorFlow, PyTorch is a complete development ecosystem, with libraries and toolboxes for everything from building PyTorch modules for games to tools for natural language processing and neural net training.
In certain parts of the media, whenever someone uses a small, embedded board to work on an IoT project, it will either be an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi, no matter which manufacturer's name is on the hardware. There are, however, many different single-board computers (SBCs) that can be used in projects, and one of the more popular is called BeagleBone. Now a version for AI is available.
BeagleBone AI is a new board, with details still emerging. What we do know is it's based on the Texas Instruments AM5729 SoC, and it's equipped with TI C66x digital-signal-processor (DSP) and embedded-vision-engine (EVE) cores supported through a TIDL (Texas Instruments Deep Learning) machine-learning OpenCL API.
BeagleBone AI should be available for around $100 later in 2019, according to the BeagleBoard.org Foundation, which says it should be a "run-out-of-the-box" experience.
From IT to marketing to HR, artificial intelligence (AI) is making its way throughout the enterprise. For security professionals, learning about the technology and how to apply it can be critical for keeping up with malicious actors and turning security into an asset. The question is how to do so without creating a new section on the "expense" side of the ledger.
The good news: Tools are available that allow virtually anyone with basic software development skills to begin honing their AI chops for a price that ranges from free to a few hundred dollars.
AI security involves many areas of research, says Jason Mancuso, a research scientist at Dropout Labs who spoke at the AI Village at DEF CON. "There is applying AI to security problems," he explains. "There's using AI to enhance red teaming or blue teaming in traditional cybersecurity. Then there's the security of AI itself, which is a totally separate field, and it's concerned with different problems."
While AI research can be conducted on a standard laptop computer, AI research can benefit from a bit of a hardware boost. For this list, we've assembled both hardware aimed at an AI mission as well as software that will help those who are first getting started.
Bear in mind: Just because these options are inexpensive doesn't mean AI is easy to master. That's where online communities, education resources, and local Meetups dedicated to AI can help.
Have you begun the process of adding AI to your security repertoire? Which tools are you using? Let us know in the Comments.
(Image Source: Worawut via Adobe Stock)
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