Harman Kaur is the Vice President of AI at Tanium, a pacesetter in Autonomous Endpoint Administration (AEM) with the business’s solely true real-time platform for AI. She brings over a decade of expertise in management, technical innovation, and cybersecurity, gained by her tenure at Tanium and repair within the US Air Drive.
In her earlier position as Chief of Workers at Tanium, Kaur labored intently with the Government Chairman, CEO, and govt group to drive strategic development, know-how alliances, and organizational execution, leveraging her deep experience in cybersecurity and IT.
Earlier, Kaur held a number of roles inside Tanium’s subject engineering group, the place she managed key accounts and contributed to product improvement and innovation, furthering the corporate’s mission to supply cutting-edge options for endpoint administration.
What initially sparked your curiosity in AI and cybersecurity, and the way did that zeal evolve right into a profession that led you to turn out to be VP of AI at Tanium?
I joined the army once I was 18 for the chance to construct a life the best way that I wished to do it. That allowed me the chance to check completely different fields like legislation, earlier than assembly a mentor who impressed me to discover ways to use computer systems. That modified my life. I ended up getting a level which was a mixture of Pc Science and Enterprise. Then, with that have, I labored in a cyber intelligence army unit. That jump-started my profession and led me to work at Tanium when it was nonetheless a startup.
Since then, I’ve worn many alternative hats at Tanium. I’ve labored in technical roles and been Chief of Workers for our Chairman and CEO. In the end, my curiosity in constructing new merchandise with rising and new applied sciences is what drew me to my present position.
Whilst you can research cybersecurity and AI at school, these of us who discover ourselves in these areas or who’re all in favour of them must carve our personal paths. It’s a subject the place all of us deliver completely different backgrounds and experience to the desk, and what actually units you aside is the way you apply that context and data.
How does your twin expertise within the army and AI intersect by way of decision-making, management, and problem-solving?
My twin expertise within the army and AI intersects in decision-making, management, and problem-solving. Within the army, I honed the power to make fast, strategic selections below stress, working in various settings like hospitals, upkeep and flying models, cyber, and even on workers for Generals. At Tanium, I’ve targeted on constructing groups, merchandise, and partnerships, which requires a extra analytical method. This mix of experiences offers me a novel perspective and the arrogance to beat any problem.
You’ve talked about that automation will probably be important for cybersecurity groups by 2025. What particular developments do you foresee making automation indispensable within the coming years?
By itself, automation helps a company scale cybersecurity practices. The extra we undertake further gadgets, software program and methods, the extra automation can improve and constantly implement safety insurance policies throughout massive environments whereas figuring out patterns to create higher, extra proactive protection.
Automation additionally gives important insights into working methods by higher knowledge aggregation. This permits our safety groups to optimize their insurance policies at a time when know-how is consistently altering and introducing new threats.
AI takes automation capabilities to a brand new degree. The mix of the 2 permits organizations to deal with repetitive, mundane duties in order that human cybersecurity specialists can deal with high-impact work. Coupled with real-time knowledge on a company’s working surroundings because it appears to be like right this moment, AI and automation can detect threats and remediate points quicker than earlier than.
In your view, what’s essentially the most vital impediment for firms aiming to implement automation of their cybersecurity practices, and the way can they put together to beat it?
Organizations have to contemplate the dangers this know-how introduces, particularly relating to identification and authentication. They’ll want to contemplate how you can deal with these new threats related to automation. They’ll additionally must introduce sturdy governance mechanisms and clear suggestions loops in order that safety groups can monitor what AI and automation are literally doing, adjusting insurance policies as wanted.
What developments in AI will Tanium be pursuing to boost endpoint safety in 2025? Might you elaborate on the position of automation and AI in autonomous endpoint administration?
With autonomous endpoint administration, or AEM, we’re automating each core IT workflow: endpoint administration, certain, but additionally safety, incident response, patching, change administration, and efficiency monitoring. Automated methods can care for the mundane, repetitive work concerned in these processes. Then, we’re coupling our unmatched capability to supply real-time knowledge on a company’s working surroundings with AI that may floor important insights on actual threats and vulnerabilities as they’re occurring and steps for remediation. Our aim, so to talk, is to show the keys of the mundane duties over to automation and let AI deal with menace detection in order that cybersecurity groups can deal with executing on remediation quicker. Their belief within the product empowers them to deal with business-critical work.
By way of what we’re pursuing in 2025, first, we’ll proceed to put money into higher automation. We wish to push boundaries and make automation much more of a power multiplier than it already is in addition to constructing brokers. We’re pondering: How can we make it greater? How can we make it so sturdy and so easy that our human cybersecurity groups can focus much less on the mundane work and extra on the high-impact work?
We’ll additionally broaden to prioritize visibility into proactive cybersecurity. We wish to give our prospects visibility into issues earlier than they go improper. That, together with utilizing knowledge for higher decision-making, is a significant focus for us. We wish to give actionable suggestions that organizations can take earlier than they’re impacted by the following large vulnerability.
Why is real-time knowledge important to creating AI in safety efficient? How does Tanium guarantee its AI capabilities are genuinely leveraging real-time knowledge?
AI helps us improve productiveness and do issues quicker. Nevertheless, there’s a degree of hesitation with this know-how. Organizations wish to be certain that they will belief the outcomes and people outcomes must be actionable. Actual-time knowledge is an unbelievable validation software and enabler of motion. With the ability to discover points after they occur and utilizing that info to make sure they don’t occur once more is useful, however having the ability to discover points as they occur and remediating these points in real-time with the context of your precise working surroundings because it appears to be like like right this moment is a superpower – and the way forward for cybersecurity.
With Tanium, real-time knowledge means that you can work together along with your endpoints and put AI’s data to work. It offers actions based mostly on historic and present knowledge and learnings to attract conclusions for the longer term. We do that with our endpoint administration agent, which repeatedly collects and transmits knowledge to a centralized supply of reality, no matter whether or not the gadget is on-line or offline. Our Tanium Information Service collects info repeatedly and robotically from the registered sensors of all endpoints. That ensures the info that our AI capabilities are utilizing is genuinely real-time knowledge.
What ought to firms consider when deciding on AI-driven safety suppliers to make sure they’re getting sturdy, real-time options?
First, organizations ought to have interaction with as many suppliers as attainable. Everyone seems to be investing in AI proper now. There isn’t a standardized, one-size-fits-all answer to utilizing this know-how, and it’s value investigating all of the completely different approaches to AI.
Secondly, organizations want to grasp the place they wish to focus. Whether or not it’s worker productiveness, quicker coding, note-taking, or higher parameter safety, they want to determine their highest precedence reasonably than making an attempt to boil the ocean.
After aligning on that, it’s vital to create a framework round onboarding. Merely shopping for an answer and turning it on received’t work, even when a vendor says it’s going to. Safety groups want to consider entry management and knowledge coverage. AI requires considerably extra onboarding than earlier instruments, and most organizations might want to create the processes for that effectively forward of implementation.
Might you present a imaginative and prescient for Tanium’s roadmap, notably the way it goals to attain autonomous endpoint administration and streamline advanced IT environments?
Already, AEM is delivering autonomous capabilities throughout our present platform. Utilizing real-time knowledge and insights from hundreds of thousands of endpoints, we share suggestions and allow organizations to automate modifications on these endpoints to allow them to streamline their operations and enhance safety wholesale. AEM is a complete platform, and it empowers our prospects to take motion on the proper time and to trust of their selections, that are based mostly on real-time, scaled knowledge.
That’s the place we’re proper now, however we’re not completed. We’ve plans for the way we’ll proceed to deal with advanced cybersecurity issues. Transferring ahead, we’re specializing in the convergence of two issues to bolster cybersecurity: AI and IT operations. Loads of suppliers mix AI and safety, and we’re doing the identical already, however we additionally wish to be the gold normal for AI in IT operations. Personally, I’d wish to see each single Tanium buyer have no less than one course of they’ve absolutely automated. Hopefully, that first step may help them construct a basis for automating their processes even additional.
How does Tanium’s platform tackle the visibility and management challenges that many organizations face as their digital environments broaden?
The largest hurdle for a company is complete visibility— figuring out what gadgets are in your group and plugged into your community.
That is one thing we’re already addressing with Tanium. Our core energy is real-time visibility and interplay with gadgets throughout a company’s digital ecosystem. We may help you see what apps you’re operating and collect details about each gadget in simply seconds. That degree of connectivity and real-time entry to knowledge from all endpoints enhances each visibility and management, that are once more challenges for organizations as we see digital environments broaden considerably. It’s our mission to get rid of these issues.
We take that mission a step additional by empowering organizations to make a change, such patching a machine, in a matter of minutes. Tanium permits organizations to work together with their total digital property at scale. For instance, if there’s a safety incident, they will see what occurred in real-time and take motion instantly, so prospects don’t even really feel the affect. It’s fast and it’s seamless.
What recommendation would you give to aspiring professionals, particularly girls, seeking to pursue a profession in AI and cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity and AI are massive fields so strive a number of various things. These fields may really feel very intimidating however keep in mind everyone seems to be making an attempt to determine it out. That can assist you construct confidence my recommendation for anybody, not simply girls, is to determine what abilities are lacking on a group and work in direction of filling that hole. Filling within the gaps may help construct confidence in your self as an issue solver whereas additionally making you indispensable.
Thanks for the nice interview, readers who want to study extra ought to go to Tanium.