Microsoft Introduces GPT-4 AI-Powered Security Copilot Tool to Empower Defenders

Mar 28, 2023Ravie LakshmananArtificial Intelligence / Cyber Threat

Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled^[1]
Security Copilot in preview, marking its continued
push to embed AI-oriented features in an attempt to offer
“end-to-end defense at machine speed and scale.”

Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 generative AI and its own
security-specific model, it’s billed as a security analysis tool^[2]
that enables cybersecurity analysts to quickly respond to threats,
process signals, and assess risk exposure.

To that end, it collates insights and data from various products
like Microsoft Sentinel, Defender, and Intune to help security
teams better understand their environment; determine if they are
susceptible to known vulnerabilities and exploits; identify ongoing
attacks their scale, and receive remediation instructions; and
summarize incidents.

Users, for instance, can ask Security Copilot about suspicious
user logins over a specific time period, or even employ it to
create a PowerPoint presentation outlining an incident and its
attack chain. It can also accept files, URLs, and code snippets for
analysis.

Redmond said its proprietary security-specific model is informed
by more than 65 trillion daily signals, emphasizing that the tool
is privacy-compliant and customer data “is not used to train the
foundation AI models.”

“Today the odds remain stacked against cybersecurity
professionals,” Vasu Jakkal, Microsoft’s corporate vice president
of Security, Compliance, Identity, and Management, pointed out^[3].

“Too often, they fight an asymmetric battle against prolific,
relentless and sophisticated attackers. To protect their
organizations, defenders must respond to threats that are often
hidden among noise.”

Security Copilot is the latest AI push^[5]
from Microsoft, which has been steadily integrating generative AI
features into its software offerings over the past two months,
including Bing^[6], Edge browser^[7], GitHub^[8], LinkedIn^[9], and Skype^[10].

The development also comes weeks after the tech giant launched^[11] Microsoft 365 Copilot^[12], integrating AI
capabilities within its suite of productivity and enterprise apps
such as Office, Outlook, and Teams.