Google expands AI-driven cybersecurity efforts with updates ahead of Black Hat and DEF CON – SiliconANGLE
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Google LLC is gearing up its push into artificial intelligence-powered cybersecurity with a series of major announcements this week ahead of the Black Hat USA and DEF CON 33 conferences in early August.
The search giant is spotlighting the growing role of agentic AI in detecting and preventing threats, including updates on its Big Sleep vulnerability discovery agent, a new AI-enabled version of its forensic tool Timesketch and its insider threat detection system FACADE.
Leading the list of announcements is news relating to Big Sleep, an autonomous AI agent launched last year to proactively hunt for unknown software vulnerabilities. Google has revealed that Big Sleep recently identified a critical SQLite flaw based on threat intelligence from the Google Threat Intelligence Group.
The vulnerability discovered by Big Sleep had been known only to threat actors and was at risk of imminent exploitation. According to Google, this marks the first time an AI agent has directly prevented a live cyberattack, a milestone in AI-driven defense.
Big Sleep is also being deployed to help improve the security of widely used open-source projects, a move Google describes as a “major win for ensuring faster, more effective security across the internet more broadly.”
Ahead of the Black Hat conference, Google is also debuting new agentic capabilities for Timesketch, its open-source digital forensics platform. The upgraded version of Timesketch can now autonomously perform initial forensic investigations by analyzing logs and summarizing findings, cutting response times and allowing security analysts to focus on more complex tasks.
Google is also providing the first in-depth technical look at FACADE (Fast and Accurate Contextual Anomaly Detection Engine), an AI-based insider threat detection system used internally since 2018. Interestingly, FACADE doesn’t rely on historical attack data but instead leverages contrastive learning to flag suspicious activity in real time, processing billions of events daily across Google’s infrastructure.
The company will also be on the ground at DEF CON 33, where it’s partnering with Airbus SE to host a Capture the Flag competition. The event will feature challenges designed to showcase how AI assistants can collaborate with human participants to solve real-world security puzzles. Google will also support the final stage of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-led AI Cyber Challenge, where competitors will demonstrate AI tools designed to secure open-source software.
Google says it’s taking a responsible approach to the rise of agentic AI in security. The company plans to donate data from its Secure AI Framework to the Coalition for Secure AI to support collaborative workstreams on agent safety, cyber defense and software supply chain security.
To support its commitment to responsible use, Google has also released a new white paper detailing its approach to building AI agents that are secure by design. The paper emphasizes principles like human oversight, transparency and risk mitigation and how agentic systems can be deployed responsibly to maximize cybersecurity impact while safeguarding privacy and preventing unintended actions.
“This summer’s advances in AI have the potential to be game-changing, but what we do next matters,” said Kent Walker, president of Global Affairs at Google. “By building these tools the right way, applying them in new ways and working together with industry and governments to deploy them at scale, we can usher in a digital future that’s not only more prosperous, but also more secure.”
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