AI revolution: Transforming industries and cybersecurity challenges

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping the future, revolutionising industries, and unlocking vast opportunities while simultaneously introducing significant cybersecurity challenges, according to an industry veteran.

Dr Tom Leighton, Co-founder and CEO of Akamai Technologies, emphasised the urgent need for a new generation of cybersecurity solutions to enable the IT sector to fully harness the rapid advancements in technology.

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“AI is changing everything. Fundamentally, it changes the way the web works, so that in the future, you’ll instruct your agent or copilot to do things for you. Behind the scenes, all the agents and apps will be talking to each other, assembling data and then executing what it is you want to happen,” Dr Leighton told BTR. 

Dr Tom Leighton co-founded Akamai Technologies in 1998 and served as Akamai’s Chief Scientist until he became CEO in 2013. Under Dr Leighton’s leadership, Akamai has evolved from its origins as a content delivery network (CDN) into the cybersecurity and cloud computing company that powers and protects business online. Dr Leighton holds more than 50 patents involving content delivery, internet protocols, algorithms for networks, cryptography, and digital rights management.

“Tremendous opportunities will emerge from that and we’re already starting to see this with the use of AI. However, it also creates large challenges. Firstly, how do we support all the infrastructure and compute capabilities we’re going to need to make this possible.

“Secondly, how do we secure it? The agents and apps are incredibly vulnerable to attackers injecting malicious information into the models and making the models do things they’re not supposed to do, such as revealing sensitive data. You need a new generation of security to sit between the various agents, the data, and the users, to ensure that it works the way it’s supposed to and we can all reap the benefits,” he said.

“I believe this region will be leading in terms of those capabilities, it has many of the world’s most prestigious financial institutions, travel and entertainment industries, and media, and a lot of people across the world will make use of the technologies here. It’s very exciting times,” he added.

Securing and scaling AI

Dr Leighton opine that everyone should learn best practices for protecting AI applications and countering cyber threats.

“To get the best performance, you need to be extremely distributive. You need the inference engine or the engine that is driving the apps and the agents to be localised. It’s fine to undergo training in a core data centre but for the day-to-day usage, it needs to be close to the user to ensure they feel like they’re talking to a human and that the content is there right away.

“Security must also be distributed but the problem today is, if you’re centralized, the attacker can overwhelm the centralized infrastructure easily. Therefore, you need to intercept the malicious traffic where it starts, so it can’t gang up and overwhelm the target. Of course, Akamai does that today with the world’s most distributive platform, with over 4,000 points of presence, across more than 700 cities, including many throughout this region, both in terms of supporting the agent, while providing security,” he said.

Shaping the future

Dr Leighton said Akamai has been shaping and enabling the internet since the beginning. “For over 25 years, we’ve operated the world’s first and most distributed platform in more than 4,000 hubs, 1,200 networks and 700 cities. Wherever there are users in the world, we want to have Akamai servers nearby, so that our customers’ applications feel like they’re close to the users and the user feels like everything they need to do their banking, their commerce, to play games or watch media is all local,” he said.

He said the security is also distributed to intercept attacks before they can get anywhere near the target. Since the beginning, Akamai has been enabling the internet to scale and we do that globally and here, throughout the region with our servers and platform.

“Our customer base includes many key government agencies, coupled with many of the world’s most important enterprises across media, banking, high-tech, corporate AI, and travel and entertainment. We help our customers protect their AI applications and agents, while providing an infrastructure where they can run their AI apps and agents,” he said.

About the recently concluded Gitex Global, he said it is an incredibly important event for Akamai Technologies because it brings together the very best in AI, cybersecurity and digital transformation technologies on a truly global stage.

“For us, it’s not just about showcasing innovation — it’s about shaping the future with industry leaders, governments and investors,” Dr Leighton concluded.

Muzaffar Rizvi

muzaffarrizvi@khaleejtimes.com

Muzaffar Rizvi is an accomplished financial journalist with more than 25 years of experience in the UAE and Pakistan. He has good writing skills, strong grip on production and an excellent news sense.