How attackers can leverage automation

Of course, attackers have access to the same technological capabilities as defenders. Like security professionals, attackers have experts creating technology for them, helping them with consulting and expertise on demand, and generally making their jobs easier. It is similar with automation. If AI algorithms are good at pattern recognition, this provides an opportunity for attackers to use those capabilities for nefarious purposes.

For example, could it be possible to train a machine learning algorithm on a list of best practices for incident response and teach a piece of malicious code to evade commonly deployed countermeasures? I couldn't imagine why not. Could attackers build self-healing worms that use multi-stage attacks to defeat commonly deployed security technologies? I think those types of sophisticated attacks are already happening.

The key point is to raise awareness that at its heart, security is about people attacking people...