Google unveils AI toolkit for cybersecurity

At RSA 2023, Google announced the Cloud Security AI Workbench, a cybersecurity package based on the large language model (LLM) Sec-PaLM.

In the year 2023, at #RSAC, how are we addressing three top security challenges: threat overload, toilsome tools, and the talent gap?

By introducing Google Cloud Security AI Workbench—an industry-first extensible platform powered by a specialized, security LLM, Sec-PaLM. pic.twitter.com/wMNc5xROG2

— Google Cloud (@googlecloud) April 24, 2023

Google representatives said Sec-PaLM is a fork of the PaLM model that is “specifically tuned for security use cases.” The LLM is designed to analyse software vulnerabilities, malware, indicators of threats, and behavioural profiles of threat actors.

Cloud Security AI Workbench contains a number of AI-based tools:

• Mandiant Threat Intelligence AI for threat hunting, summarising and remediating security threats;
• VirusTotal will use Sec-PaLM to help subscribers analyse the behaviour of malicious scripts and explain it;
• Google Chronicle for searching security events and interacting with the results in a ‘conservative’ manner;
• Google Security Command Center AI, producing ‘readable’ explanations of exposure to attacks, including affected assets, recommended mitigation measures, and risk summaries.

‘Sec-PaLM is built on years of foundational AI research conducted by Google and DeepMind, as well as the deep expertise of our security teams,’ the developers said.

Google added that it has only begun to realise the potential of generative AI in threat prevention. Company representatives pledged to continue exploring how the latest AI advances can be applied to security.

VirusTotal Code Insight will be the first tool in Cloud Security AI Workbench. A preview version is already available to a limited group of users.

Google plans to roll out the remaining apps to “trusted testers” in the coming months.

In April, the tech giant announced the unification of its Brain and DeepMind AI divisions into a single team.

In March, Google unveiled a suite of AI features for office and cloud services. Among them is the language model for answering medical questions, Med-PaLM 2.