Less Sexy Than Generative AI Drafting Contracts, But Bringing AI Into Cybersecurity Is Pretty Important
An interesting law firm use case for AI.
The problem with ChatGPT and generative AI exploding onto the mainstream scene is the way it’s sucked all the oxygen out of the legal technology space. Whether everyone’s talking about how to convince lawyers to adopt AI where it works or talking about why they shouldn’t where it doesn’t, everyone at ILTACON was talking about AI. Which is a shame, because right before the GPT era we had a brief shining moment where cybersecurity had started to take off.
Nothing against AI — it’s very important yadda yadda yadda — but security poses an existential threat to law firms and clients. And legal has notoriously stupid responses.
But maybe there’s a way to capture the AI buzz for the benefit of cybersecurity.
Every time a firm brings in a new piece of software or updates some existing solution, someone has to go through and make sure it isn’t going to destroy the delicate house of cards that holds up the modern practice of law. And while an update that broke Word’s ability to communicate with a firm’s document management system might be frustrating, the greater risk is in opening up vulnerabilities in the system that bad actors can exploit.
While cruising through ILTACON, I had a chat with Aiden, which stands for AI for Desktops and Enterprise Networks, about this process and how artificial intelligence can facilitate this process.
“We’re not another deployment platform,” CEO Joshua Aaron told me. “We’re this little AI bot that can be pushed through any one of those deployment platforms because our patent is around the fact that we built the software as a software package. It goes out onto a computer, scans the entire computer for every software binary running on the machine, even firmware, drivers, and BIOS, which are things that people really are frustrated with trying to update. But we have viruses there too, if you don’t keep them updated.”
Updating out-of-compliance machines through imaging and cloning can proliferate hidden vulnerabilities throughout the network, and Aiden avoids that by recognizing these machines and building it back from scratch. No copies upon copies.
“Whether it’s a new machine you built, or it’s a machine you’ve been running in the environment for years, it brings everything into what we call desired state configuration,” Aaron explained. “And then we have an AIDEN vision reporting system that shows the IT managers, the CTO, the CISO, in plain English and on a graph, every single binary running on every computer, what’s up to date, what’s not, what’s pending a reboot, what AIDEN’s going to do the next time it runs in the future?”
All this promises more visibility, faster patches, fewer reboots — as reboots can be bundled — and an all-around safer system with some customers reporting 30 percent reductions in vulnerabilities over a couple of months and clients that have run the product for some time seeing upwards of 97 percent reductions.
Software packaging probably isn’t what partners are thinking about when they’re asking IT folks to “go get us some AI” but as AI use cases go, cybersecurity is a pretty important one.
And it won’t get you sanctioned.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
