Small World: The Revitalization Of Small AI Models For Cybersecurity
Sophos, Wednesday, July 23rd, 2025
Sophos X-Ops explores why larger isn't always better when it comes to solving security challenges with AI
The last few months and years have seen a wave of AI integration across multiple sectors, driven by new technology and global enthusiasm. There are copilots, summarization models, code assistants, and chatbots at every level of an organization, from engineering to HR. The impact of these models is not only professional, but personal: enhancing our ability to write code, locate information, summarize dense text, and brainstorm new ideas.
This may all seem very recent, but AI has been woven into the fabric of cybersecurity for many years. However, there are still improvements to be made. In our industry, for example, models are often deployed on a massive scale, processing billions of events a day. Large language models (LLMs) - the models that usually grab the headlines - perform well, and are popular, but are ill-suited for this kind of application.