The question of cyber security is hard and getting harder: Billions of Internet of Things devices are expanding the attack surface area. Who will secure these connections and how?

One security expert says the answer lay not in hiring more geniuses or automating everything, but rather in pairing humans with machines so they both can do what they do best.

Derek Manky, global security strategist at Fortinet Inc., said that attackers and their malware are getting smarter. “What we’re seeing now is cyber criminals developing automated systems of their own to infect these systems to report back to them,” he told Peter Burris (@plburris) and Lisa Martin (@Luccazara), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio during this year’s Fortinet Accelerate event. (*Disclosure below.)

Manky said the new “automated malware” employs virtual machines to do a lot of the heavy lifting and then escalate their best attacks up to the human criminals to exploit.

Good guys finish first

The good news is that the internet’s forces of light are doing much the same in their cyber security and protection work.

Manky said that Fortinet and FortiGaurd Labs  (a group of more than 200 security experts from around the world) have been perfecting the machine-human equation. The idea is to have machines find the needle in the haystack and then send it up to the brilliant human security experts for intelligent handling.

Further, Manky believes that Fortinet can beat attackers to the punch with its machine learning technology.

“For 15 years at FortiGaurd Labs, we’ve invested a ton into our AI and machine learning intelligence, so we’re experts on the automation — I don’t believe the black hat attackers are experts on automation,” he said, adding that the Fortinet’s security fabric in particular utilizes AI to prevent attacks.

All this adds up to an optimistic outlook on security for Manky. “I really firmly believe that this year is a year that we can have the advantage as white hats to get one leg up on the black hat attackers,” he said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Fortinet Accelerate 2017. (*Disclosure: Fortinet Inc. and other companies sponsor some Accelerate 2017 segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Fortinet nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo by SiliconANGLE