SentinelOne believes cybersecurity won’t have time for a human in the loop

“In order to be able to successfully defend governments and enterprises, you've got to bring AI and ML technologies to bear, because you won't have the time to have a human in the loop,” says Andrew Howell, Vice President of Government Affairs, SentinelOne.

Andrew Howell, Vice President of Government Affairs, SentinelOne believes that AI is seeing greater importance in cybersecurity, especially when it comes to managing the attack surface in an effective and rapid way.

Following acquisitions of Prompt Security and Observo AI, SentinelOne is hoping that its now capable of helping government agencies and enterprises in Southeast Asia understand better how they can use AI to help them have better cybersecurity.

He shares more about this in an interview with CRN Asia. Howell also explains why he feels cybersecurity is heading towards an era where there are fewer humans in the loop required.

Can you tell us more about the opportunities for SentinelOne in Southeast Asia?

Southeast Asia is a region of the world that is spending a lot of time and energy modernizing its technology stack. And as we look at technology modernization in Asia, that obviously means expansion of the threat landscape and the attack surface for companies and governments. And as a result, organizations need services and solutions like the ones provided by SentinelOne to help them manage that attack surface effectively and in a very rapid way.

As attacks get bigger and faster, companies need technology that can respond at machine speed. As a company with an AI machine learning heritage, that's what we do and that's what we're particularly proud of starting from our endpoint technology solution through all our technology.

How is Ai making a difference to cybersecurity today?

There's a series of threat actors around the world and in this region that challenge governments and enterprises of all types and sizes. As we look at the threat landscape in particular, we see a world in which more attackers are using autonomous technologies or AI-powered technologies.

And in order to be able to successfully defend governments and enterprises, you've got to bring AI and ML technologies to bear, because you won't have the time to have a human in the loop.

You'll need technology like ours that battles machine speed with machine speed. And that was the important consideration behind our last two acquisitions, Prompt Security and Observo AI. We see that the need to defend that machine speed as being the differentiator from our perspective, but also the requirement for enterprises to protect themselves on a go-forward basis from threats today and threats tomorrow.

Are we moving to an era where there’s less of a human in the loop needed in cybersecurity?

I think we're definitely moving to an era where there's less of a human in the loop. If you need to get a decision maker to sign off on some decision, once you're being attacked by an AI-enabled bot, you're going to be too late. And that's how we're thinking about preparing today for tomorrow. It is being able to bring that machine speed, that AI-powered technology to bear in order to help our customers successfully prevent attacks and defend themselves from attacks.

At the same time, what you're doing in a lot of ways with technology is enabling a broader group of people to have better tools at their disposal sooner so that they can make sure that an enterprise or a government is most effectively prepared to push back against attacks and to defend themselves from attacks.

It's really kind of that technology enables a greater upskilling of people, and there are always going to be people in this space helping enterprises build out their plans and implement them.

With that said, how is AI adoption in cybersecurity among governments and enterprises?

As we look at adoption of AI, I think everyone on the government side and on the private sector side is looking at AI and saying “how can I use AI to be better, faster, stronger, smarter”

And as part of doing that, decision makers in government and in the private sector need to think through about the risks they are opening their enterprise or government agency up to in doing that because they want to provide employees with tools that enable them to be smarter, be faster, be better and be stronger.

And so, our Prompt Security acquisition is a great example of how we look at helping governments and enterprise customers be able to ensure that their employees and that their users are using AI in the framework that the government or the customer sets up. Because making sure that AI is used and employees are able to use AI tools is absolutely critical but doing it within the guidelines set forth by the government or by the enterprise is just as important.

Looking at the amount of cybersecurity vendors here today, as an organization, how do they know what's right?

The great news about the cybersecurity ecosystem is that customers have a proliferation of choices. That proliferation of choices is indicative of a tremendous amount of innovation that's taking place in cybersecurity.

As we look at our innovation journey, our innovation journey as a company that has its heritage in AI and ML is looking at how we can continue to use AI and ML to help our customers defend themselves from today's threats as well as tomorrow's and anticipating today's threats and tomorrow's.

And so, from an end user perspective, we think that it's absolutely terrific that they have such a rich marketplace. And it's our job to differentiate ourselves from all the other vendors.

From our perspective, that differentiation is our ability to help those companies defend those companies, and those governments defend themselves at speed in an AI enabled world. That's really what we're talking about.

Is budget still a concern in cybersecurity decisions in the region?

I've been working in cybersecurity for nearly 30 years. I don't think there's ever been a year where people haven't been worried about budget. And so, I think that those issues are always out there.

But at the end of the day, what government users and enterprise users really want is they want value. And they want to be able to anticipate what's going to happen tomorrow, right? And that's where we think we excel as a company. We have a value-based offering that helps our customers defend themselves today and be able to defend themselves tomorrow and anticipate the threats kind of in the entire horizon.

Lastly, can you tell us a bit more about your partner ecosystem in the region?

Our partner ecosystem is absolutely essential to us being able to deliver our technology to our customers and understanding our customers' needs. And we lean heavily on our partners.

We fortunately have an extraordinarily rich partner ecosystem that we can go to market with. From our perspective, as we look to educate the marketplace, we're educating end buyers as well as our partners and our resellers in the entire kind of ecosystem that we use to go to market.