IBM’s Denis Kennelly believes IBM Watson and AI give it the edge in what he describes as a game of wits.

If it isn’t the government that has a drop on you with an unexpected vulnerability, it could be the legions of hackers for hire who are now running businesses, selling code for cash on the dark web.

As many as 200,000 malware samples per day are being generated, all of which are aimed at breaking into systems that – at least on the outside – appear secure.

Not so, according to IBM Security’s chief product officer, Denis Kennelly, who sees the immense challenges being stemmed by its not-so secret weapon: artificial intelligence (AI).

“Security is a game of wits,” Kennelly said in conversation with Siliconrepublic.com.

“It’s a game of really intelligent people perpetrating the attack, and also very intelligent people defending against the attack.”

Words by Colm Gorey