CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. is rolling out new capabilities aimed at helping companies more effectively respond to breach attempts.

The first set of features, a collection of integrations for Amazon Web Services Inc.’s cloud platform, was detailed this morning. A day earlier, CrowdStrike introduced a chatbot called Charlotte AI that runs on artificial intelligence models from AWS. It promises to help companies understand and remediate breaches faster.

Nasdaq-listed CrowdStrike is one of the world’s largest cybersecurity providers. Its Falcon breach prevention platform is used by more than 20,000 customers, including multiple Fortune 500 companies. One factor behind the software’s popularity is that it’s relatively simple to install and maintain. 

As part of its platform, CrowdStrike provides a suite of tools called Falcon Cloud Security. The tools can scan a company’s public cloud environment for vulnerabilities and spot hacking attempts. This morning, CrowdStrike previewed new integrations that will extend Falcon Cloud Security’s features to several of the AI services offered by AWS.

CrowdStrike also detailed that it’s using one of those AI services, Amazon Bedrock, internally. Bedrock makes cloud-hosted foundation models available through application programming interfaces. CrowdStrike is using the service to power Charlotte AI, a new cybersecurity chatbot it debuted on Tuesday.

The chatbot enables customers to interact with the company’s Falcon platform using natural language instructions. According to CrowdStrike, Charlotte AI will simplify several common cybersecurity tasks. 

Administrators can use the chatbot to find vulnerable systems in their company’s network quickly. Charlotte AI could, for example, identify all the employee laptops that contain a certain known software exploit. In response to user queries, the chatbot generates a dashboard that displays not only vulnerable systems but also remediation advice.

Charlotte AI can likewise surface information about any ongoing cyberattacks that may be targeting a company. The chatbot highlights which specific systems the hackers are attempting to access, as well as what breach tactics they’ve been using.

According to CrowdStrike, Charlotte AI’s ability to fetch incident data rapidly can help administrators more quickly address cybersecurity risks. The company believes the chatbot will also be useful for users with limited technical knowledge. Such users can now access information about key aspects of their company’s cybersecurity posture without assistance from administrators.

“Since our founding, CrowdStrike has pioneered the use of artificial intelligence in cybersecurity to identify adversary behavior and combat sophisticated attacks to stop breaches,” said CrowdStrike President Mike Sentonas. “With the introduction of Charlotte AI, we’re delivering the next innovation that will help users of all skill levels improve their ability to stop breaches while reducing security operations complexity.”

Charlotte AI is currently in private preview. It joins the generative AI cybersecurity tools that Microsoft Corp., one of CrowdStrike’s main competitors, and Google LLC introduced earlier this year. The latter tools likewise enable administrators to collect data about cybersecurity risks using natural language prompts.

Image: CrowdStrike