Fighting cybercrime without AI is like trying to clear up a snowstorm with a spoon – Brian Gumbel, Dataminr

As the global cost of cybercrime soars, AI is the only way to combat the rising tide of sophisticated threats, according to Dataminr president Brian Gumbel.

Speaking at Collision in Toronto, Brian (pictured above) said: “What we’re seeing is an influx of every type of security risk out there.

“It could be phishing attacks, DDoS attacks, ransomware attacks. Being in the cybersecurity industry for the last 20 years, never have we seen a time of this brazen and bold of hackers trying to steal information, and the only way to combat that is through the use of AI.”

Brian’s comments come amid estimates from Statista that the global cost of cybercrime will reach US$13.82 trillion by 2028.

Speaking on Collision’s AI Academy stage, Brian said: “Their techniques are becoming more sophisticated and more advanced, and the influx on (cybersecurity) practitioners of how much they have to deal with in the day is absolutely daunting.” 

Fighting modern hackers is like shovelling snow with a spoon

“Imagine if here we are in Toronto in the middle of the winter, and there’s a snowstorm, and you’re a practitioner, and you have to clean up the roads with a spoon, how ridiculous would that be? It’s kind of the same thing that they’re dealing with right now with all the inbound that they’re getting.”

Brain continued: “Only AI has that ability to be able to speed up that process and get in front of it for early warning detection across the board.”

From left, Ian Swanson, Protect AI; Ann Irvine, Resilience; Brian Gumbel, Dataminr; Tony Gentilcore, Glean. Photo by Vaughn Ridley/Collision via Sportsfile

Brian was joined on stage by Protect AI founder and CEO, Ian Swanson, Glean co-founder, Tony Gentilcore and Resilience chief data and analytics officer, Ann Irvine (pictured).

Ann said: “I think the real potential for leveraging AI and cybersecurity is to speed up and to react, not only react to new threat vectors and techniques and procedures, but also to sort of predict them and disrupt the ecosystem of threat actors, understand not only what they’re doing today, but where they’re going.” 

The data and analytics officer went on to say that it is an entire marketplace unto itself: “There are business models involved on the attacker side, and really understanding deeply in a predictive way what’s going on on the attacker side is the best way to disrupt those attacks and prevent them.”

But can we hold back the tide, especially as AI itself is contributing to more advanced cyberattacks?

Protect AI CEO and founder, Ian Swanson explained, “There’s a lot of regulations coming in the world of AI. We’ve seen it in the EU with the AI Act and in the United States, there’s an executive order. Also in Canada, there’s a lot of regulation and we’ve seen a lot of these governing bodies come together and create frameworks and best practices.”

“An example is needing to have AI that is audited, you need to be able to have a supply chain analysis, you need to know how it’s built, you need to know those ingredients.”

Ian continued: “And so this is one of the strange areas within my career, unlike data, where government bodies are actually leaning in and moving almost as fast as some of the technology is.”

“A lot of people say regulation could kill innovation, but in this case, a lot of the regulation is meant to be sensible to create guardrails around safety, trust and security,” added the founder.

Glean co-founder Tony Gentilcore was asked about the ethical implications of AI on cybersecurity and said: “There’s definitely a lot of ethical concerns. We’ve come from the era of what I would say is generative AI 1.0 where AI works with you, it summarizes things for you, it generates content for you, but you’re in the loop.” 

“And we’re going to the generative AI 2.0 age where it works for you and these are agents that are taking action upon your behalf. One of the really important things that we all have to keep in mind is how are humans still in the loop as we make this jump for safety, but for ethical reasons too.”

The panel’s comments were made as part of a wider discussion on how AI is revolutionizing cybersecurity practices while also addressing the crucial aspect of safeguarding AI models themselves at Collision, which is returning to Toronto for its sixth year. Global founders, CEOs, investors and members of the media have come to the city to make deals and experience North America’s thriving tech ecosystem.

More than 1,600 startups are taking part in Collision 2024 – the highest number of startups ever at a Collision event. 45 percent of these are women-founded, and startups have travelled to Toronto from countries including Nigeria, the Republic of Korea, Uruguay, Japan, Italy, Ghana, Pakistan and beyond.

In total, more than 37,800 attendees have gathered at the event, as well as 570 speakers and 1,003 members of the media, to explore business opportunities with an international audience.

739 investors are attending Collision, including Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures; Wesley Chan, co-founder and managing partner of FPV Ventures; and Nigel Morris, co-founder and managing partner of QED Investors, as well as nine companies on the Forbes Midas List, and 12 investors from those firms.

Top speakers at Collision include:

• Geoffrey Hinton, Godfather of AI
• Maria Sharapova, entrepreneur and tennis legend
• Aidan Gomez, founder and CEO of Cohere (an AI for enterprise and large language model company, which raised US$450 million at a US$5 billion valuation in June 2024)
• Raquel Urtasun, founder and CEO of Waabi (a Canadian autonomous trucking company)
• Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password
• Dali Rajic, president and COO of Wiz (a cloud security platform)
• Alex Israel, co-founder and CEO of Metropolis (an AI and computer vision platform)
• Jonathan Ross, founder and CEO of Groq (an AI chip startup)
• Keily Blair, CEO of OnlyFans
• Autumn Peltier, Indigenous rights activist

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Useful links

• Collision website: https://collisionconf.com/ 
• Collision media kit: https://collisionconf.com/media/media-kit  
• Collision images: https://flickr.com/photos/collisionconf 
• About Web Summit: about.websummit.com