How agencies can balance AI’s potential and risks for cyber attacks
How agencies can balance AI’s potential and risks for cyber attacks
Publish Date: 2026-06-03 16:19:00
Source Domain: www.route-fifty.com
Cybersecurity remains a top priority for state and local leaders, and technology like artificial intelligence has emerged as one tool in governments’ arsenals to thwart cyber attacks. But leaders must find a balance between AI’s potential and its risks in order to effectively use the technology, speakers said at the Engage Public Sector Summit hosted by GovExec, Carahsoft and Check Point last week in Washington, D.C.
Bad actors have increasingly targeted critical government functions from elections to public transit systems and schools. The growing threat landscape presents government leaders with the opportunity to explore innovative solutions like AI to combat cyber attacks, Keith Hartung, chief security officer at the Pennsylvania Treasury Department, said.
“AI and security are a natural fit … because we’ve been leveraging [them] for years,” said Hartung. While generative AI is a newer concept to tech and cyber leaders, “deep learning and machine learning that [AI] is built on are the same baseline technologies that we’ve used to analyze emails and sort the logs in our SIM tools for forever,” he said.
Now, tech staff can do more and do it faster because AI has become more advanced, Hartung said. As an example, he explained that the Pennsylvania Treasury Department has 360 employees, but only three of them — including Hartung — make up the agency’s security team.
That’s where AI in cybersecurity has functioned as a “force enabler” for the trio in charge of managing the approximately $120 billion that flows through the Treasury Department annually, Hartung said. Without AI, the team would not be able to keep up with sorting the thousands of log files that they need to stay on top of in order to monitor and address cyber threats.
The team also leans on an AI model to predict cyber threats because the system can scour social media, dark web sources or public websites to alert staff of potential vulnerabilities that could be…
