Harman Kaur is the Vice President of AI at Tanium, a frontrunner 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 way of her tenure at Tanium and repair within the US Air Drive.
In her earlier function as Chief of Workers at Tanium, Kaur labored carefully with the Govt Chairman, CEO, and government workforce to drive strategic progress, expertise alliances, and organizational execution, leveraging her deep experience in cybersecurity and IT.
Earlier, Kaur held a number of roles inside Tanium’s discipline 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 change into VP of AI at Tanium?
I joined the army once I was 18 for the chance to construct a life the way in which that I needed to do it. That allowed me the chance to review totally different fields like regulation, 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 function.
Whilst you can research cybersecurity and AI at school, these of us who discover ourselves in these areas or who’re keen on them need to carve our personal paths. It’s a discipline the place all of us convey totally different backgrounds and experience to the desk, and what actually units you aside is the way you apply that context and information.
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 flexibility to make fast, strategic selections below strain, working in various settings like hospitals, upkeep and flying models, cyber, and even on workers for Generals. At Tanium, I’ve centered on constructing groups, merchandise, and partnerships, which requires a extra analytical method. This mix of experiences provides me a singular perspective and the arrogance to beat any problem.
You’ve talked about that automation can 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 corporation scale cybersecurity practices. The extra we undertake further units, software program and programs, the extra automation can improve and persistently implement safety insurance policies throughout giant environments whereas figuring out patterns to create higher, extra proactive protection.
Automation additionally supplies crucial insights into working programs by way of higher knowledge aggregation. This permits our safety groups to optimize their insurance policies at a time when expertise is consistently altering and introducing new threats.
AI takes automation capabilities to a brand new degree. The mixture of the 2 permits organizations to deal with repetitive, mundane duties in order that human cybersecurity specialists can give attention to high-impact work. Coupled with real-time knowledge on a corporation’s working setting because it seems in the present day, AI and automation can detect threats and remediate points quicker than earlier than.
In your view, what’s essentially the most important 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 expertise introduces, particularly in the case of 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 reinforce endpoint safety in 2025? Might you elaborate on the function of automation and AI in autonomous endpoint administration?
With autonomous endpoint administration, or AEM, we’re automating each core IT workflow: endpoint administration, positive, but additionally safety, incident response, patching, change administration, and efficiency monitoring. Automated programs can care for the mundane, repetitive work concerned in these processes. Then, we’re coupling our unmatched potential to supply real-time knowledge on a corporation’s working setting with AI that may floor crucial insights on actual threats and vulnerabilities as they’re taking place and steps for remediation. Our purpose, so to talk, is to show the keys of the mundane duties over to automation and let AI deal with risk detection in order that cybersecurity groups can give attention to executing on remediation quicker. Their belief within the product empowers them to give attention to business-critical work.
When it comes to what we’re pursuing in 2025, first, we’ll proceed to put money into higher automation. We need to push boundaries and make automation much more of a pressure multiplier than it already is in addition to constructing brokers. We’re considering: 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 develop to prioritize visibility into proactive cybersecurity. We need to give our clients visibility into issues earlier than they go fallacious. That, together with utilizing knowledge for higher decision-making, is a significant focus for us. We need to give actionable suggestions that organizations can take earlier than they’re impacted by the subsequent large vulnerability.
Why is real-time knowledge crucial 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 expertise. Organizations need to be certain that they’ll belief the outcomes and people outcomes should be actionable. Actual-time knowledge is an unimaginable validation software and enabler of motion. Having the ability to discover points after they occur and utilizing that data 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 setting because it seems like in the present day is a superpower – and the way forward for cybersecurity.
With Tanium, real-time knowledge means that you can work together together with your endpoints and put AI’s information to work. It provides 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 fact, no matter whether or not the machine is on-line or offline. Our Tanium Knowledge Service collects data repeatedly and mechanically 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 choosing AI-driven safety suppliers to make sure they’re getting sturdy, real-time options?
First, organizations ought to interact with as many suppliers as potential. Everyone seems to be investing in AI proper now. There is no such thing as a standardized, one-size-fits-all answer to utilizing this expertise, and it’s value investigating all of the totally different approaches to AI.
Secondly, organizations want to know the place they need to focus. Whether or not it’s worker productiveness, quicker coding, note-taking, or higher parameter safety, they want to determine their highest precedence relatively than attempting 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’ll. 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 realize autonomous endpoint administration and streamline advanced IT environments?
Already, AEM is delivering autonomous capabilities throughout our current platform. Utilizing real-time knowledge and insights from tens of millions 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 clients to take motion on the proper time and to have faith 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 have now plans for a 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 need to be the gold normal for AI in IT operations. Personally, I’d wish to see each single Tanium buyer have at the least 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 deal with the visibility and management challenges that many organizations face as their digital environments develop?
The largest hurdle for a corporation is complete visibility— understanding what units 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 units throughout a corporation’s digital ecosystem. We may help you see what apps you’re operating and collect details about each machine 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 develop 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 complete digital property at scale. For instance, if there’s a safety incident, they’ll see what occurred in real-time and take motion instantly, so clients don’t even really feel the impression. It’s fast and it’s seamless.
What recommendation would you give to aspiring professionals, particularly girls, trying to pursue a profession in AI and cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity and AI are giant fields so attempt lots of various things. These fields may also really feel very intimidating however keep in mind everyone seems to be attempting to determine it out. That will help you construct confidence my recommendation for anybody, not simply girls, is to determine what expertise are lacking on a workforce and work in the 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 good interview, readers who want to study extra ought to go to Tanium.
