Fujitsu’s new AI tech aims to help respond to cyberattacks

Japanese tech giant Fujitsu Ltd (TYO:6702) has announced that it has developed a new solution harnessing artificial intelligence (AI).

Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. have created an AI technology that automatically determines whether action needs to be taken in response to a cyberattack. This technology identifies and extracts attack logs, which show the behavior of a cyberattack, from huge amounts of operations logs. The company also developed a technology that expands on the small number of training data extracted in a manner that does not spoil attack characteristics. This generates a sufficient amount of training data. In simulations using these technologies, they achieved a match rate of about 95% in comparison with experts’ conclusions regarding the need for action, and they did not miss any attack cases that required a response. The time necessary to reach a conclusion was also shortened from several hours to several minutes.

Thanks to these technologies, countermeasures can quickly be put in place for cyberattacks that have been determined to require action, contributing to business continuity and the prevention of loss.

Fujitsu Laboratories combined the newly developed technologies with its own Deep Tensor AI technology, and ran evaluative testing on the determination model that had been trained on the new training data. Run in a simulation using about four months of data (12,000 items) the technologies made an approximate 95% match with the findings that a security expert generated through manual analysis, achieving a near equal determination of response necessity.

Furthermore, the technologies were field tested on STARDUST, the Cyber-attack Enticement Platform which is jointly operated with the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), using real cyberattacks targeting companies. The technologies automatically determined the attack cases requiring a response, thereby confirming their effectiveness. With these AI technologies, determinations of the necessity of action, which until now have taken an expert several hours to several days, can be automatically made with high accuracy from tens of seconds to several minutes.

Also, by combining these technologies with Fujitsu Laboratories’ high-speed forensic technology, which rapidly analyzes the whole picture of the status of damage from a targeted attack, the response sequence, from attack analysis to instructions for action, can be automated, enabling immediate responses to cyberattacks and minimizing damage.

Speaking of Fujitsu’s AI technology developments, let’s recall that, in November 2018, the company announced the establishment of a new company in Canada that will formulate and carry out strategy for its AI business. “Fujitsu Intelligence Technology”, which is based in Vancouver, started operations on November 1, 2018. The new entity aims to grow Fujitsu’s global AI business by bringing together the innovative AI technologies and solutions developed by the company in Japan and regions around the world, and then by providing these back to each region as global products and services.