Will AI Replace Cybersecurity Jobs?

Do cybersecurity jobs have a limited lifespan as AI becomes better and better at securing stuff?

AI has been hugely popular these last couple of years, but it seems to have really entered the mainstream in late 2022 with ChatGPT.

Along with all the crazy things ChatGPT can do, it seems to have sparked the conversation of how much AI can replace humans in the future.

Writers like me are seeing its full potential and are excited ( and terrified ) by how quickly AI seems to be evolving.

While repetitive jobs have always been vulnerable to automation, this is the first time creative skills like writing and artistry seem to be in danger of being replaced by AI.

That begs the question .. What about Cybersecurity ?

AI in Cybersecurity

AI-powered cybersecurity products have been doing the rounds for years, and I have been skeptical of quite a few of them.

The reason being they looked like your standard security product with a few new bells and whistles added.

Nothing special honestly

AI seemed like the latest buzzword which vendors were adding into slide decks to get more money from CISOs and not really a game changer.

However, a few developments in the last couple of years have changed that, and AI has emerged on its own both for and against cybersecurity.

Without naming names, I have seen cybersecurity products that are truly innovative due to being “AI-driven” that can analyze terabytes of data to stop attacks in real-time.

I have also written about how AI Deepfake scams are a game changer and how ChatGPT can up the game with regard to phishing attacks.

But what about Cybersecurity jobs .. how will AI change the cybersecurity industry going forward?

let's take a look

Is AI coming for your cybersecurity job?

Well, YES and NO

I have said many times before that while the cybersecurity industry is in recession-proof.. cybersecurity professionals are not.

CISOs can always outsource or move to a managed services model for their security needs and cut costs and jobs at the same time.

Similarly, AI might prove an attractive alternative for some positions .. why hire a full-time security analyst when an AI will do the job?

Here are the sort of jobs I think might get replaced as AI matures in the coming year

Disclaimer: This is of course my personal subjective option so take it or leave it freely

1- Cybersecurity engineers

Just to be clear .. I am talking about those cybersecurity engineers whose job description seems to be responding to alerts with the same generic copy-pasted emails, closing tickets, or downloading/emailing reports to IT. There is nothing in this job that cannot easily be automated/cut down.

Upgrade your skills immediately if this is what you are doing in your 9–5

2- SOC / Incident response

Again just like above. I am not talking about those SOC analysts who do deep-level analysis or forensics for which you need human involvement.

If your job involves responding to alerts or updating blacklists in a product, expect this job to become obsolete as more and more automation and orchestration become common

3- Vulnerability Assessments

Running a scan against a server and downloading a PDF to make the IT team install some patches is no one's idea of an exciting cybersecurity career. As more and more workflows get automated, this is another job ripe for being moved toward AI

4- SIEM engineer

Does your job involve writing basic alert logic for SIEM products?

ChatGPT might make your job easier or even redundant in the future

Splunk

Sumo Logic

Simple YARA rule

5- Cybersecurity documentation

Again if you are simply creating policy documents and updating them year after year, then this job has a limited life span. As more and more services move to a managed cloud model, boring documentation will increasingly move to the provider.

IT auditing

ChatGPT is also great at creating audit programs for everything from windows to AWS. As more and more environments move to the cloud and a managed services model, IT auditors will need to become smarter to stay relevant.

The good news

The good news is that while AI might replace cybersecurity jobs.. the demand for cybersecurity professionals will not go away .. current skillsets will simply get replaced with a new set of cybersecurity skills.

AI will never replace purely human skills such as strategic thinking, leadership, and empathy.

AI is not going to motivate your cybersecurity team to give it their 100% during an incident.

AI is not going to take your team out to lunches when morale is low

On the flip side, AI is definitely going to be used as a weapon by cyber criminals going forward

AI-based applications also will introduce new types of vulnerabilities, which will require new types of cybersecurity controls

Expect inference attacks and model evasion to become as common as SQL injection and XSS attacks are today

Expect penetration testers and Red teamers to leverage ChatGPT for some cool security tests and social engineering assessments.

I expect ChatGPT to fully become a tool in the cybersecurity team’s portfolio going forward.

Expect to see ChatGPT skills showing up in job postings for cybersecurity professionals in the coming months / years

The future is bright for AI-based cybersecurity

AI is not a magical silver bullet that will replace humans anytime soon

It still needs humans to run it and improve upon it ( and secure it ! )

Our current cybersecurity skills might get replaced, but it will only get replaced with a completely new one, so the future is bright for this profession!

Thanks for reading this ! If you found the whole topic of AI governance and cybersecurity interesting then check out my class on the same below

Taimur Ijlal is a multi-award-winning, information security leader with over two decades of international experience in cyber-security and IT risk management in the fin-tech industry. Taimur can be connected on LinkedIn or on his YouTube channel, “Cloud Security Guy” on which he regularly posts about Cloud Security, Artificial Intelligence, and general cyber-security career advice.

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