Trend Micro has announced a new partnership with Nvidia to enhance its cybersecurity offerings using artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The collaboration aims to improve Trend Micro’s ability to detect and respond to cyber threats by leveraging Nvidia’s advanced software tools. This approach is expected to increase the efficiency and accuracy of identifying malicious activities, providing better protection for users.
The partnership reflects a broader trend in the cybersecurity industry, where AI and machine learning are increasingly being utilized to combat sophisticated cyberattacks. With companies investing heavily in AI software and hardware, these installations require robust protection from cybersecurity threats and security lapses. Trend Micro is developing AI-powered security tools, such as Vision One-SPC (Sovereign and Private Cloud) and Cyber Security LLM, which will now leverage GPUs, widely used in AI data centers.
Major large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Microsoft’s BingGPT operate on GPUs, underscoring the widespread adoption of this technology. “The top cloud and AI vendors use GPU technology, and the top server vendors offer GPU-certified hardware. We aim to secure all of it,” states a Trend Micro spokesperson.
This partnership is expected to appeal to sectors such as banking and pharmaceuticals, where private clouds are prevalent, and protecting proprietary data is paramount. Frank Dickson, group vice president at IDC’s security and trust research practice, notes, “You’re making a huge investment in a resource to drive a return for your company. You want to make sure it’s used appropriately.”
Analysts point out that GPUs are significantly faster at analyzing telemetry and recommending security measures than conventional CPUs.
Running Trend Micro’s security tools on GPUs promises more sophisticated detection and protection against intrusion and threats.
Enhancing AI cybersecurity with Nvidia
One growing concern is AI data poisoning, where hackers manipulate the data to damage the model, which can be better mitigated by security tools powered by GPUs.
“Some workloads that traditionally relied on CPUs are now shifting to GPUs and are being processed quicker,” says Technalysis analyst Bob O’Donnell. Trend Micro’s proprietary interface, NIM (Inference Microservices), will enable the company to deploy its AI-based security services using GPUs more efficiently. NIM allows software to run on GPU accelerators significantly faster than on CPUs.
Trend Micro plans to utilize NIM’s flexibility to integrate its cybersecurity tools with pretrained AI models. For instance, a security AI model, Morpheus, alerts system administrators to potential threats by identifying abnormal activity in network logs and logins. However, analysts note that there may be challenges in implementing the security software stack, which will require significant learning and training.
“Every server farm is unique, and applying these tools to that unique environment will involve a lot of discovery and adaptation,” Dickson adds. In a related development, Trend Micro has also unveiled its first consumer security solutions tailored to safeguard against emerging threats in the era of AI PCs. These advanced capabilities will be available to consumers in late 2024.
Trend Micro’s new solutions focus on both leveraging AI for security and securing AI itself. The company is committed to addressing the risks associated with AI PCs powered by neural processing units (NPUs), which allow consumers to run AI applications locally rather than in the cloud. The new capabilities being showcased at Computex 2024 include AI Application Protection, which aims to protect consumer AI applications from malicious activities such as model tampering or knowledge base poisoning, and NPU-powered Email Security, which enables email scam protection to run locally on an AI PC, offering a better user experience and removing data privacy friction from the process.
