IBM's Watson Protecting Cybersecurity Concerns

The incredibly accurate cognitive system which won Jeopardy and has helped find treatments for patients suffering from cancer is now going to put its core capabilities into a security operations center. IST at Penn State covers fundamental issues and concepts of computer forensics, a major aspect of computer and cyber crime security. Watson has the technological ability to read millions of documents to gain insight on areas which humans might not spot. Large corporations are the main target to use Watson's skills. With Watson, these large corporations will gain the ability to scan hundreds of thousands of events happening over their networks everyday. IBM hopes that this is just the first step for Watson in cybersecurity because the software actually learns as it goes so it is always improving.

It is essential to improve security everyday when working with large corporations or universities such as Penn State. I think that with the help of Watson, a university such as Penn State could prevent data breaches such as those which occurred in November 2014. In 2014 the Federal Bureau of Investigation notified Penn States College of Engineering that they had been attacked twice. Later that year the College of Liberal Arts was also attacked. IBM's Watson could help IT security firms to assist in tracking and preventing these attacks in the future. You can find more information on the cyber attacks against Penn State here