AI-DRIVEN CYBERSECURITY: PROTECTING DATA AND PRIVACY IN AN EVOLVING DIGITAL WORLD

Abstract

This paper looks into how artificial intelligence (AI) can help improve cybersecurity practices in terms of their performance, challenges, ethical implications and future outlooks. It is expected to appraise how AI-driven tools can likely to ward off increasingly complex cyber threats without impairing the security-versus-privacy dialectic. The study focuses on the growing sophistication of cyber-attacks and the inability of the conventional security systems to deal with the current digital environment. The research method was a quantitative research and data obtained by the aid of a structured and closed ended questionnaire that was administered to a purposive sample (n of 100). They were IT professionals, AI and cybersecurity researchers, workers in technology and finance departments and graduates of computer science in advanced level. Material was gathered with the help of an online survey and was processed by means of IBM SPSS (Version 28). All the findings or results were interpreted using descriptive and inferential statistics and visual tools like bar charts and pie graphs. The findings expose a high degree of accepting and understanding about the use of AI-enhanced cybersecurity among experts. About 70 percent of the responds indicate that they have agreed that AI can help greatly in detecting threats to a large extent than traditional techniques. Behavioral analytics, phishing protection, and real-time detection of threats were spotted as the most well-known applications. On the other hand, some of the most reported concerns were associated with high implementation costs, data security, shortage of skilled professionals and hostile AI risks. Although 75 percent of the participants felt that the AI tools were practical, most of them emphasized that it is essential to maintain a human and AI relationship as opposed to automation. Respondents advocated a higher level of AI regulation and the need of explainable and ethical AI systems. This research can be relevant to many practitioners in the field of cybersecurity because it can provide new knowledge and practical information about how AI can be applied in the field of cybersecurity. Combining a technical analysis with the ethical assessment, it can become a part of the existing discussion around the ethical and efficient approach to implementing AI in cybersecurity infrastructures. The study stresses the need to keep pushing innovation, regulations, and cross-species collaborative systems to maintain healthy defense against the ever-changing environment of threat.

Keywords

( AI-driven cybersecurity, threat detection, data privacy, adversarial AI, explainable artificial intelligence).