The Australian organisations looking to generative AI to boost security operations

Harmful cyber activity continues to pose a risk to Australia’s defences, with cyber threat actors using increasingly sophisticated tactics including looking to GenerativeAI to augment their operations. Cyber Security remains a top priority for organisations, with new GenAI tools becoming available to help empower security analysts to defend at machine speed and scale.

Australian Super, Powerlink Queensland, and TAL are leading the way in bolstering their cybersecurity measures by becoming among the first Australian organisations to deploy Microsoft Copilot for Security, the first generative AI security product brought to market. The service builds on large language models (LLMs) and harnesses Microsoft’s security expertise and global threat intelligence – including 78 trillion daily threat signals – to help security defenders outpace their adversaries and move and respond at machine speed and scale.

Copilot for Security has been offered to select organisations through the company’s Early Access Program (EAP) which kicked off in December 2023. Earlier this month it became available for general purchase to organisations across Australia on a consumption-based pay-as-you-go model.

“With recent reports exposing early moves of threat actors using AI to research and refine their attacks, we are at a pivotal moment where we need to bring new capabilities to ensure we can defend at machine speed,” said Evan Williams, Business Group Director for Security at Microsoft ANZ. “Given the global skills shortage we are facing in cybersecurity, there is an immense opportunity for generative AI to help up-skill security teams, save them time when it matters most, and free them to focus on more complex or strategic work.”

A recent economic study examined Copilot for Security users against a control group and found experienced security analysts were 22 per cent faster with Copilot, 7 per cent more accurate across all tasks, and most notably, 97 per cent said they want to use Copilot the next time they do the same task. An earlier study that focused on new-in-career analysts, found that participants using Copilot were 44 per cent more accurate and 26 per cent faster on foundational tasks such as investigation and response, threat hunting and threat intelligence assessments.

Tackling cyber security threats at scale and speed

TAL, a leading Australian life insurer, and one of the first organisations to deploy Copilot for Microsoft 365 has also signed up to the Copilot for Security EAP. The company says the investment supports its commitment to technology innovation, with security-focused AI tools key to continuously improving employee and customer experiences – faster, safely.

TAL Chief Information Officer, Hinesh Chauhan said the collaboration with Microsoft has been instrumental in integrating AI technology responsibly and securely.

“Microsoft’s Copilot program has allowed us to experiment with and learn from AI technology in a safe way. AI will play an increasingly significant role in tackling cyber security threats at scale, and at speed. We believe our involvement in the Copilot for Security EAP will give our specialist cyber teams valuable insights on what this technology can do to boost our threat detection and response capabilities, and strengthen their knowledge and expertise.”