IBM is championing generative AI and automation to safeguard security across AWS environments.

IBM’s Autonomous Security for Cloud (ASC) can help organisations transition to cloud-based environments using Amazon Bedrock’s generative artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline and automate security and compliance tasks.

It is designed to automate cloud security management and decision-making to help mitigate risk for organisations accelerating their cloud journey on Amazon Web Services (AWS) environments.

Highlighted in IBM’s 2024 Cloud Threat Landscape (www.ibm.com/blog/x-force-cloud-threat-landscape) report, misconfigurations and compliance failures were identified as the top threats organisations face as they increasingly rely on cloud computing environments. Yet, in a technology landscape where security is non-negotiable, maintaining compliance and security can be complex, especially in highly regulated industries such as financial services, manufacturing and the public sector where legacy, labour-intensive compliance processes can be slow to evolve to rapidly changing cloud infrastructures and the strict regulatory standards required to protect data.

For organisations focused on cloud-based architectures, security management requires robust and specific policies and configurations to mitigate potential risks. To address those needs, IBM’s ASC will leverage Amazon Bedrock generative AI technology to automate, evolve and enforce client-chosen security controls quickly.

“Insights from TheCube Research show that 96% of organisations continue to embrace cloud transformation, which intensifies the challenge of managing and securing data,” said Dave Vellante, chief analyst of TheCube Research. “Generative AI-driven automation has the potential to be a game-changer, empowering companies to swiftly adapt, enforce and control data policies.”

Using generative AI for autonomous decisions, ASC aims to help ease operational burdens, accelerate deployment and management, and mitigate risks by offering continuous monitoring, immediate adjustments and proactive threat mitigation, all designed to reduce manual work. Augmenting traditional cloud security posture management (CSPM), ASC will provide a tailored approach to cloud security management by harnessing AI-powered intelligence to consider the client-chosen control framework, along with future updates. In addition, ASC is designed to automate and enforce hygiene maintenance, resolve misconfigurations, and reduce and address long-term policy drift.

“IBM recognised the opportunity for our clients to better manage and enforce security policies in their cloud environments,” said Dimple Ahluwalia from IBM. “With ASC, we’re utilising AI and automation tools to help organisations better manage their data, tackle cloud migration challenges and positively impact their compliance posture, to deliver value to stakeholders across the C-suite.”

As a scalable cloud option, ASC is designed to help:

• Harness the power of generative AI to understand clients’ security policies and standards using large language models (LLMs) and retrieval-augmented generative (RAG) applications;
• Infer AWS native technical controls that apply to an organisation’s workloads based on the client-chosen regulatory obligations;
• Autonomously monitor and deploy cloud security controls to mitigate misconfigurations; and,
• Address non-compliance discrepancies using cloud-native automation.

And, for client security teams that spend months mapping security policies, aligning them with regulations and transforming them into scripts, ASC also seeks to accelerate the time spent on policy deployment using a combination of generative AI and cloud-native automation.

The introduction of ASC underscores IBM’s commitment to helping mutual clients harness the power of AWS. By combining IBM’s expertise in cloud transformation with AWS, ASC will let clients accelerate their cloud adoption and unlock opportunities for business transformation and growth.

Beginning with deployment and onboarding, IBM (www.ibm.com) consultants with cloud certifications and AWS (aws.amazon.com) expertise can assist clients using ASC with tailored assessments, continuous monitoring and optimisation, and proactive risk and compliance management. In addition, IBM can support ASC integration on AWS to address evolving cloud infrastructure needs with the goal of improving accuracy and effectiveness over time.

For more information, visit: www.ibm.com/services/autonomous-security-cloud.