Microsoft’s Security Copilot brings AI to security, and it’s making me nervous

Microsoft is bringing AI to security, and suddenly Skynet doesn’t seem so farfetched.

In a blog post, the company announced Security Copilot, a new tool that is purpose-built for security professionals. Microsoft says that this is the “first security product to enable defenders to move at the speed and scale of AI. Security Copilot combines this advanced large language model (LLM) with a security-specific model from Microsoft.”

Security Copilot is built using OpenAI’s GPT-4 generative AI, just like the Microsoft 365 Copilot that the company announced a couple of weeks ago when it revealed its new AI tools for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and the rest of its productivity suite. This new copilot, however, uses a “security-specific model to deploy skills and queries that maximize the value of the latest large language model capabilities.”

When Security Copilot receives a prompt from a security professional, it uses the full power of the security-specific model to deploy skills and queries that maximize the value of the latest large language model capabilities. And this is unique to a security use-case. Our cyber-trained model adds a learning system to create and tune new skills. Security Copilot then can help catch what other approaches might miss and augment an analyst’s work. In a typical incident, this boost translates into gains in the quality of detection, speed of response and ability to strengthen security posture.

Microsoft says that Security Copilot will have the following benefits for security professionals:

• Ongoing access to the most advanced OpenAI models to support the most demanding security tasks and applications
• A security-specific model that benefits from continuous reinforcement, learning and user feedback to meet the unique needs of security professionals;
• Visibility and evergreen threat intelligence powered by your organization’s security products and the 65 trillion threat signals Microsoft sees every day to ensure that security teams are operating with the latest knowledge of attackers, their tactics, techniques, and procedures;
• Integration with Microsoft’s end-to-end security portfolio for a highly efficient experience that builds on the security signals;
• A growing list of unique skills and prompts that elevate the expertise of security teams and set the bar higher for what is possible even under limited resources.

I’m definitely not a security expert, but the idea of bringing AI to security tools makes me incredibly nervous. I’m sure my concerns aren’t valid, and actual experts can explain why this is important and necessary, but I WATCHED TERMINATOR.