The University of Waterloo is one of three Canadian universities to join a year-long research project to teach IBM’s Watson cognitive computing platform how to comb through unstructured data to improve cyber security.
Starting this fall Waterloo, along with the University of Ottawa, the University of New Brunswick and a number of American universities, will work with IBM to teach Watson how to discover patterns and evidence of hidden cyber attacks and threats.
In making the announcement on May 10, Caleb Barlow, vice-president of IBM Security, said the work won’t necessarily lead to a commercial Watson for Cyber Security product. For example, Watson will work with IBM’s free X-Force threat information exchange.
The goal of Watson for Cyber Security will be to give infosec pros an extra hand by analyzing unstructured security-related data on the Internet that traditional security tools can’t process, including blogs, articles, videos, reports, alerts, and other information.
Unique learning opportunity
Waterloo is renowned for its unique system of education that equips students with real-world experiences as they pursue their academic careers, both through co-op work experiences as well as exposure to new research," said Manoj Sachdev, chair of Waterloo’s electrical and computer engineering department and the University's facilitator for the project.
"We are delighted that IBM is giving Waterloo students a valuable opportunity to explore the state of the art at the intersection of machine learning and cybersecurity," he added.