Artificial intelligence (AI) is not the elusive 'silver bullet' the ICT sector (including the cyber security domain) is searching for – but it remains useful and is revolutionising the cyber security space by revealing far more than what has been available up until now.

This is according to Orli Gan, Head of Threat Prevention, Product Management at Check Point, who was speaking at Check Point Technologies' annual CPX 360 cyber security conference in Barcelona.

The Check Point executive said AI represents the next industrial revolution, effectively replacing the human mind with machines. This is evident in the emergence of concepts such as shopping predictions, image search and speech recognition.

"AI is everywhere, there's no doubt about it... but why now? " Gan asked. "Well, it is because of a combination of technology that has matured simultaneously ... storage, compute power and maths. This technology has taken AI from academic research to product development and rollout."

"So, is AI magic? No, it is not magic ... but it is useful," Gan added. "If it in the right application, with the right things."

The main challenges with AI's value in application is that it requires a high volume of rich data as well as expertise, both AI and domain expertise, and, according to Gan, there simply isn't enough data or expertise. The problem is also compounded by limited access to cyber security training, the verdict logic is obscure and there is a high false detection rate.

"It may not be the silver bullet in cyber security, but it is revolutionising the industry as we speak, allowing us to see things we were previously blind to and make sense of data like never before. That is why Check Point has invested in AI and integrated this technology into its threat prevention solutions," Gan continued.

As examples, Gan underlined the company's Campaign Hunting predictive threat intelligence, its Huntress to uncover malicious executables and Cadet for context aware detection.

The company believes that accurate verdict equals practical prevention.