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A Look at AI-Enhanced Cybersecurity

Artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay, and the federal government is investing heavily in this up-and-coming tech as a line of defense against increasingly advanced cyberattacks.   

AI has been touted as a game-changer for agencies, with many organizations utilizing it for better decision-making and to perform predictive analysis that allows for proactive cyber defense. Not sure if AI could work for your agency? Here’s a real-life example of how one agency is using it to stay ahead of threats while working toward energy efficiency.   

The Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) understands that a hybrid electric grid could greatly increase energy efficiency across the United States. However, it could also easily become a large target for nation-state attackers, who have begun turning their attention to critical infrastructure.   

That doesn’t mean the switch to hybrid isn’t worth exploring, however – it just means a strategic plan must be put in place to prepare for such threats. The NREL’s plan for protecting the grid includes implementing high-resolution, real-time simulations of energy systems at full complexity, and using AI for autonomous threat detection.   

The NREL lab, which focuses on energy efficiency, sustainable transportation, and renewable power technologies, is currently conducting research on AI’s threat correlation capabilities across various entities and geographies, using large data sets to anticipate attacks, and characterizing device behavior to develop trust scores.   

Additionally, it is also researching deep reinforcement learning, a subset of machine learning, to improve the resilience of its energy distribution systems, and training Generative Adversarial Networks, a deep learning model known as GANS, to confront AI-generated attacks.  

To learn more about how artificial intelligence can make a positive impact on your agency’s cybersecurity efforts, download this playbook

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