Sault’s PUC boss hangs with hackers at Vegas security conference

PUC Services is looking at employing artificial intelligence to lock down its cybersecurity defences, after president and CEO Rob Brewer attended this year's Black Hat Briefing event in Las Vegas.

Billed as the “world’s premier technical cybersecurity conference," the August event drew more than 20,000 attendees to the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.

First held 27 years ago, the gathering allows business executives, government officials and security professionals to rub shoulders with hackers.

Over the years, not all the hackers attending have been of the harmless 'white hat' variety.

Shenanigans by Black Hat attendees have included hacking hotel billing systems and wireless connections, and intercepting communications from the press room's local area network.

In 2010, a Black Hatter even got an ATM machine in the host hotel's lobby to spew out its cash.

But the PUC's president and chief executive officer picked up what he believes was some useful intelligence at this year's conference.

"I had a chance to get down to the Black Hat, which is a cyber conference," Brewer told his board of directors at their October meeting.

"On the front end of that, they had an AI summit about all the different uses of AI technology with respect to cybersecurity, both on what we need to look for in terms of defence, and then actual opportunities to use AI as part of those defences.

"That was the first week of August. Some really neat things coming out of that, and we're working to continue to raise the bar with respect to cyber, it is our number one risk, and it's something that we're extremely focused on," Brewer said.

“As with all modern organizations, we recognize the importance of robust cybersecurity measures in protecting our infrastructure and ensuring reliable service," he told SooToday.

"We continuously invest in and enhance our security protocols to address evolving risks in the digital landscape.”

Reuters recently reported that cyberattacks on U.S. utilities were up almost 70 per cent over the same period last year.

"The utilities and power infrastructure across the U.S. are becoming increasingly vulnerable as the grid expands rapidly to meet surging demand for power and assets are digitalized," the news service reported.

"Utilities are low-hanging fruit for cyberattacks because many of them use outdated software," Douglas McKee of the cybersecurity firm SonicWall, told Reuters.

Cisco's Splunk Blogs reported from the Black Hat conference that: "generative Al and its dual nature as both a threat and a defence tool were central themes."

"While Al can amplify the success rate of cyberattacks and the spread of misinformation, it also offers opportunities for enhancing cybersecurity defences.

"Many vendors at Black Hat, including IBM and HPE, showcased new Al-driven tools aimed at improving threat detection, response, and anomaly detection."

The blog said some experts are still skeptical about using AI before the possibility of unintended vulnerabilities is fully known.