About a month ago, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty re­silience was boost­ed when the Over­watch Cy­ber Fu­sion Cen­tre was launched at the Brix Au­to­graph Col­lec­tion in St. Ann’s.

At that launch, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley called cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty a col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Em­manuel Os­car, se­nior man­ag­er for sys­tems en­gi­neer­ing at Fortinet for the Caribbean, agrees.

He told the Busi­ness Guardian that Over­watch’s cre­ation was a much-need­ed step in chang­ing the at­ti­tude to­ward cy­ber­se­cu­ri­tyin the re­gion.

“Fortinet is a leader in the cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty space. It was found­ed more than 20 years ago. And we are the dri­ving force in the evo­lu­tion of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and the con­ver­gence of net­work and in se­cu­ri­ty, se­cur­ing peo­ple, de­vices and da­ta every­where, and that’s our mis­sion in glob­al cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny,” said Os­car.

In those 20 years, Os­car ad­mit­ted it took some time to see the Caribbean ma­ture about cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, but he has seen re­cent pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments.

“I was for­tu­nate enough to have met the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley dur­ing the launch of Over­watch, which is the cy­ber-Caribbean se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tion cen­tre by Pre­ci­sion, who we al­so part­ner with and that’s al­so part of the co­or­di­nat­ed com­mit­ment,” he said.

Os­car was re­cent­ly in Trinidad to present at Fortinet’s “De­vel­op­ing a cy­ber-Re­silience strat­e­gy us­ing AI-pow­ered plat­forms” event.

He ex­plained at those events and in an in­ter­view that AI has tak­en up a per­ti­nent role in cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty.

“What we’ve seen in the Latin Amer­i­ca/Caribbean mar­ket is that the threat land­scape is for­ev­er in­creas­ing. We see the num­ber of threats year over year has aug­ment­ed, and Fortinet has been a pi­o­neer in AI in­no­va­tion with­in cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty for more than more than a decade, in which AI has been the back­bone of se­cu­ri­ty and threat in­tel­li­gence ser­vices for Fortinet,” Os­car said.

“By lever­ag­ing tech­nolo­gies, such as ma­chine learn­ing, and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, or­gan­i­sa­tions can stay ahead of at­tack­ers and proac­tive­ly mon­i­tor and analyse cy­berthreats, help­ing iden­ti­fy vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties be­fore they can be ex­ploit­ed. That in turn al­lows for time­ly im­ple­men­ta­tion and re­me­di­a­tion mea­sures against po­ten­tial in­tru­sions in threat, there­by ad­dress­ing the rise of cy­berthreats with­in the Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean mar­ket,” said Os­car.

There has been some prece­dent in terms of AI aid­ing in pre­vent­ing ma­jor dam­age in terms of cy­ber­at­tacks.

Last month, Mas­ter­card con­firmed that it was us­ing gen­er­a­tive AI to dou­ble the speed at which it can de­tect po­ten­tial­ly com­pro­mised cards, fur­ther pro­tect­ing card­hold­ers and se­cur­ing the ecosys­tem.

Mas­ter­card said the tech­nol­o­gy works by scan­ning card trans­ac­tion da­ta at faster rates than be­fore. As a re­sult, Mas­ter­card alerts banks faster and with greater ac­cu­ra­cy when a card is like­ly to have been com­pro­mised.

Mas­ter­card said, “The card can then be blocked and reis­sued. At­tempt­ed trans­ac­tions on the com­pro­mised card can be con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tored to mit­i­gate fraud and en­hance cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, fur­ther in­still­ing trust.”

Os­car how­ev­er warned that the need to adopt AI as an aid was cru­cial as like­ly fraud­sters were al­ready try­ing to use tech­nol­o­gy to help them com­mit crimes.

“AI is trend­ing and that’s the buzz­word it’s a tech­nol­o­gy we have to face and em­brace it. AI is re­shap­ing the way net­work se­cu­ri­ty is op­er­at­ed and IT pro­fes­sion­als sup­port it be­cause of the speed at which we’re able to iden­ti­fy, de­tect and re­spond to dif­fer­ent in­ci­dents. AI tech­nolo­gies have be­come an in­creas­ing­ly in­te­gral part of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and as we in the Caribbean go through dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, we have to em­brace AI to help fos­ter an en­vi­ron­ment where AI will al­low us to do more with less at a faster rate be­cause the bad guys them­selves are lever­ag­ing AI as well to do their mis­deeds,” Os­car said.

Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean have seen mil­lions of cy­ber­at­tacks in re­cent years, with T&T busi­ness­es falling vic­tim to sig­nif­i­cant cy­ber at­tacks in the past two years with Massy, TSTT and Prices­mart among the no­table vic­tims.

Os­car said this has on­ly re­in­forced the need for com­pa­nies like Fortinet to push to ed­u­cate the pub­lic on var­i­ous mea­sures to pro­tect them­selves from these threats, es­pe­cial­ly in T&T where the gov­ern­ment has be­gun a dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion push.

“As the cy­berthreat land­scape in­ten­si­fied, we look at the av­er­age of less than five days for pub­licly dis­closed vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties to be ex­ploit­ed by cy­berthreats, so we col­lab­o­rate. It is a col­lab­o­ra­tion with high pro­file and well-re­spect­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions across the pub­lic, pri­vate sec­tor and acad­e­mia, which is a crit­i­cal as­pect of the Fortinet com­mit­ment to im­prov­ing cy­ber­re­silience in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” said Os­car, “Now this al­lows Trinidad and To­ba­go to ben­e­fit from in­no­va­tions such as AI and the lat­est threat in­tel­li­gence to stay ahead of the ever-chang­ing threat land­scape. “

Os­car ex­plained Fortinet has 10 ex­perts cur­rent­ly aid­ing T&T with its ef­forts.

“We fo­cus on the busi­ness but al­so there’s a role gov­ern­ment needs to play. What we do with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go— is that as you progress through your dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, which is every cit­i­zen with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go—is to col­lab­o­rate with work­ing groups, part­ner­ships with busi­ness and gov­ern­ments to col­lect, en­hance, pro­tect and as­sist in the fight against (cy­ber­at­tacks) and un­der­stand the im­pact of cy­berthreats. So this col­lab­o­ra­tion in­cludes ed­u­ca­tion, work­ing with gov­ern­ments and help­ing the reg­u­lar lay­man un­der­stand the role and im­pact that cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty plays.”

At Am­cham T&T’s an­nu­al meet­ing ear­li­er this month, coun­try man­ag­er of G4S Se­cure So­lu­tions Trinidad, James De­v­ers, al­so ac­knowl­edged the need for greater im­pe­tus on cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty.

He said then, “Col­lab­o­ra­tion to en­sure that cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty is crit­i­cal be­cause da­ta is valu­able. They say da­ta is more valu­able than mon­ey. So hav­ing a ro­bust cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem in any or­gan­i­sa­tion or any busi­ness is crit­i­cal. We’ve seen in­stances in Trinidad and To­ba­go where cy­ber­at­tacks have brought down ma­jor or­gan­i­sa­tions with­in the coun­try and so the IT pro­fes­sion­als in any or­gan­i­sa­tion have to be laser-fo­cused on en­sur­ing that their cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture is there and can mit­i­gate. It can’t be pre­vent­ed be­cause un­for­tu­nate­ly, the hack­ers are al­ways work­ing to try and fig­ure out ways of break­ing in­to sys­tems”

De­v­ers called for a cul­ture change with re­gard to cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, but Os­car is of the be­lief that Trinidad and To­ba­go is mak­ing that shift.

“If you look at the re­ports from OAS, many coun­tries with­in the Caribbean have the cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty ma­tu­ri­ty, which is in the ear­ly stages, but when we look at the ini­tia­tives that are hap­pen­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, it’s very promis­ing. The move­ment is in the right di­rec­tion to help the cit­i­zens un­der­stand the im­pact of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and more im­por­tant­ly, the gov­ern­ment un­der­stands the im­por­tance of cy­ber of the im­pact of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty be­cause at the end of the day, it’s about the way we work, we live and play, the way you go to school,” said Os­car.

As for those who still hold out con­cern that AI may be a dou­ble-edged sword, Os­car urged them to look at the good that can be done, and not just in cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty.

“Like any oth­er tech­nol­o­gy or any new tech­nol­o­gy, there’s go­ing to be some doubts about its us­es, but rest as­sured what we can do is to ed­u­cate our cit­i­zens glob­al­ly. AI has a lot of po­ten­tial and ben­e­fits in terms of med­ical, ed­u­ca­tion, you name it. Al­so in cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, the bad guys are us­ing it as well. They are al­so lever­ag­ing AI as well for their mis­deeds. But over­all, the ben­e­fits of AI when it comes to ed­u­ca­tion, and health­care is huge. It’s a huge, huge mar­ket,” he said.