Generative AI as a force for good in facilitating cyber-resiliency in public sector organizations
Overview
As cyber threats continue to evolve, many organizations struggle to evaluate their cybersecurity infrastructure and implement necessary safeguards. To address this gap, the Cal Poly Digital Transformation Hub (DxHub) powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), the City of San Diego, and the San Diego Cyber Center of Excellence (CCOE) have designed and developed “My eCISO,” an innovative, generative AI-based application that assists organizations in improving their cyber resiliency.
Problem
Data breaches and cyber-attacks are on the rise globally, with 83% of organizations experiencing more than one breach in 2022 alone. Between 2016-2022, US K-12 schools saw 1,619 publicly disclosed attacks. Traditionally, maintaining security of systems and data falls to the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). However, many organizations lack dedicated security staff and struggle to keep pace with evolving threats.
Innovation in Action
To address this gap, the DxHub, City of San Diego, and CCOE convened stakeholders to understand needs and co-design “My eCISO”. This generative AI chatbot conducts a natural language interview currently based on the NIST 1.1 framework, to assess an organization’s security posture. It then generates a graded report, NIST-compliant recommendations, and actionable next steps to improve cyber resiliency.
My eCISO meets users where they are, allowing customizable detail levels to produce tailored reports. Conversations can range from short high-level dialogue or go deep and last hours. New features being tested enable alignment with various frameworks like HIPAA and CJIS. Hosted securely in AWS and keeping all of your organizational data private, My eCISO leverages services like Amazon Bedrock and Claude v2 for advanced natural language capabilities. The serverless architecture design enables privacy, security, and scalability.
Technical Solution
The application relies on several managed AWS services. Amazon Cognito authenticates users and helps keep information secure. Data is persisted to an Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) database using a PostgreSQL engine to collect data input during the interview process, which can be used for analytics and to help triage organizations most in need of improvements to their cyber infrastructure. AWS Lambda and Amazon API Gateway provide the backend application logic that can leverage any Amazon Bedrock model. Code is stored in AWS CodeCommit, with automated, continuous deployment and integration managed by AWS Code Pipeline and AWS Code Deploy.
Conclusion
After successful initial testing, My eCISO will pilot with early adopters in early 2024 in the San Diego region. The My eCISO solution is well positioned to provide regional cyber support and the DX Hub will continue to explore additional feature development and replicability to other regions. Interested parties can contact the DX Hub at dxhub@calpoly.edu.
Supporting Documents
| Source Code | All of the code and assets developed during the course of creating the prototype. |
| Architecture Diagram | A diagram that describes the technical components needed to implement the solution. |
About the DxHub
The Cal Poly Digital Transformation Hub (DxHub) is a strategic relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is the world’s first cloud innovation center supported by AWS on a University campus. The primary goal of the DxHub is to provide real-world problem-solving experiences to students by immersing them in the application of proven innovation methods in combination with the latest technologies to solve important challenges in the public sector. The challenges being addressed cover a wide variety of topics including homelessness, evidence-based policing, digital literacy, virtual cybersecurity laboratories and many others. The DxHub leverages the deep subject matter expertise of government, education and non-profit organizations to clearly understand the customers affected by public sector challenges and develops solutions that meet the customer needs.