Jerry Petersen
Microsoft Senior Vice President and 2025 Wash100 Award winner Candice Ling foresees cybersecurity and artificial intelligence going hand in hand in the coming years.
Sophisticated Cyber Threats
The head of Microsoft’s federal business said during a recent episode of the Virginia Economic Review Podcast that she expects cyber threats to become increasingly sophisticated and so require AI to proactively defend against.
“We’ll see greater reliance on AI to augment what I would call cyber defensive capabilities, how to repel threats before they happen, using AI to be proactive,” Ling predicted.
The Microsoft executive also discussed the challenge posed by social engineering and the need to ensure that people are not deceived through the use of AI. To help people detect such threats, Ling said training programs, awareness campaigns and policies must be put in place.
Proactive Defenses
“We are excited to see if we can continue to solidify adoption of that. We mentioned that the U.S. Department of Defense has a goal to implement all those practices across their system by 2027. We are really just working, being diligent, given that the Navy met their zero-trust goal in 2024. Now we’ve got to make sure that others would take a similar approach because it’s important for national security,” Ling explained.
“It is really about being proactive and not just reactive,” she added.
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