IBM is training Watson to hunt hackers

Watson, IBM's computer brain, has a lot of talents. It mastered "Jeopardy!," it cooks, and even tries to cure cancer. But now, it’s training for a new challenge: Hunting hackers.

On Tuesday, IBM Security announced a new cloud-based version of the cognitive technology, dubbed “Watson for Cybersecurity.” In the fall, IBM will be partnering with eight universities to help get Watson up to speed by flooding it with security reports and data.

The plan as of now is for Watson to process up to 15,000 documents about digital security a month -- including everything from blog posts to videos -- so that it can get a feel for the sometimes esoteric terminology of the cybersecurity world.

Students at the partnered universities will help with that by initially annotating documents so that Watson will be able to interpret the material on its own down the line.

The end goal is a big data approach to cybersecurity that will have Watson automatically scour vast troves of security research at a rate human operators couldn't possibly manage to investigate when something fishy hits a victim’s computer systems.

"It's automating the hunt,” explained Caleb Barlow, vice president for IBM Security.

Link to article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/05/10/ibm-is-training-watson-to-hunt-hackers/