Artificial Intelligence for Cyber Security

Since the United States is such a large market for products and services from nearly all technology innovations, a patent counting for growth in patenting over a period of times in the US can be a good measuring tool for monitoring the evolution of technology innovations. Following figure shows the growth trends for the artificial intelligence (AI) for cyber security technology innovations base on the patent research of nearly 100 published applications and issued patents by the USPTO as of 3Q 2016.

The figure indicates that very active AI for cyber security technology innovations started from 2013 and keep increasing (since there is usually a time lag between the priority date and publication date by two to three years, the number of patents in 2015 is not fully accounted as of 3Q 2016).

Number of patents for an assignee divided by the total number of patents gives what percentage the assignee contributes to the AI for cyber security technology innovations. Ranking the assignees by the number of patents is thus an important part of visualizing the innovations landscape. Following figure shows the top assignees for the deep learning technology innovations. The top AI for cyber security technology innovators include Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, Wistron, HP, Cyberpoint International LLC, and Cyberricade.

Following figure shows the key applications of the AI for cyber security technology innovations. The figure shows that Malware Detection is the most used application of the AI for cyber security technology innovations.

As an interesting innovation regarding the AI for cyber security, US20160253495 illustrates the system of detecting the anomalous behavior in the cyber-physical system that are susceptible to both physical and cyber attacks exploiting the machine learning techniques. A cyber-physical system is a system that supports efficient control and determination by interlocking the real world and the virtual world. A cyber-physical system is a hybrid system in which embedded systems are combined based on a network, and has the characteristics of both continuous elements such as physical elements and discrete elements such as software elements.

Examples of cyber-physical system applications include the smart electric grid, smart transportation, smart buildings, smart medical technologies, smart air traffic management, and smart manufacturing. Cyber-physical systems are the key enabling technologies of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The IIoT will produce huge opportunities for companies in Aviation, Oil and Gas, Transportation, Power Generation and Distribution, Manufacturing, Healthcare and Mining industries.