Watson, IBM's computer brain, has a lot of talents. It mastered Jeopardy!, it cooks, and even tries to cure cancer. But now, it's training for a new challenge: hunting hackers.

On Tuesday, IBM Security announced a new cloud-based version of the cognitive technology, dubbed "Watson for Cybersecurity". This year, IBM will be partnering with eight universities to help get Watson up to speed by flooding it with security reports and data.

IBM's Chief Watson Security Architect Jeb Linton demonstrating to University of Maryland, Baltimore County student Lisa Mathews how to teach IBM's Watson the language of security. Credit:Mitro Hood/Feature Photo Service for IBM

The plan as of now is for Watson to process up to 15,000 documents about digital security a month – including everything from blog posts to videos – so that it can get a feel for the sometimes esoteric terminology of the cybersecurity world.

Students at the partnered universities will help with that by initially annotating documents so that Watson will be able to interpret the material on its own down the line.