Harman Kaur is the Vice President of AI at Tanium, a frontrunner in Autonomous Endpoint Administration (AEM) with the trade’s solely true real-time platform for AI. She brings over a decade of expertise in management, technical innovation, and cybersecurity, gained by means of her tenure at Tanium and repair within the US Air Power.
In her earlier function as Chief of Employees at Tanium, Kaur labored intently with the Govt Chairman, CEO, and govt workforce 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 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 turn out to be VP of AI at Tanium?
I joined the navy 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 check completely 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 navy 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 various hats at Tanium. I’ve labored in technical roles and been Chief of Employees for our Chairman and CEO. Finally, my curiosity in constructing new merchandise with rising and new applied sciences is what drew me to my present function.
When you can examine cybersecurity and AI in class, these of us who discover ourselves in these areas or who’re fascinated about them need to carve our personal paths. It’s a discipline the place all of us convey completely 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 navy and AI intersect when it comes to decision-making, management, and problem-solving?
My twin expertise within the navy and AI intersects in decision-making, management, and problem-solving. Within the navy, I honed the power to make fast, strategic selections underneath stress, working in various settings like hospitals, upkeep and flying models, cyber, and even on employees for Generals. At Tanium, I’ve targeted on constructing groups, merchandise, and partnerships, which requires a extra analytical strategy. This mix of experiences offers me a novel perspective and the boldness to beat any problem.
You’ve talked about that automation might 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 extra units, 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 supplies vital insights into working methods by means of higher information aggregation. This permits our safety groups to optimize their insurance policies at a time when know-how is continually altering and introducing new threats.
AI takes automation capabilities to a brand new stage. The mixture 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 information on a corporation’s working surroundings because it seems as we speak, AI and automation can detect threats and remediate points sooner than earlier than.
In your view, what’s probably 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 know-how introduces, particularly on the subject of id and authentication. They’ll want to contemplate the best way to deal with these new threats related to automation. They’ll additionally must introduce robust 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 in addition safety, incident response, patching, change administration, and efficiency monitoring. Automated methods can deal with the mundane, repetitive work concerned in these processes. Then, we’re coupling our unmatched potential to supply real-time information on a corporation’s working surroundings with AI that may floor vital 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 menace detection in order that cybersecurity groups can deal with executing on remediation sooner. 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 need to push boundaries and make automation much more of a pressure multiplier than it already is in addition to constructing brokers. We’re pondering: How can we make it larger? How can we make it so strong 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 incorrect. That, together with utilizing information for higher decision-making, is a serious focus for us. We need to give actionable suggestions that organizations can take earlier than they’re impacted by the following huge vulnerability.
Why is real-time information vital to creating AI in safety efficient? How does Tanium guarantee its AI capabilities are genuinely leveraging real-time information?
AI helps us improve productiveness and do issues sooner. Nonetheless, there’s a stage of hesitation with this know-how. Organizations need to ensure they will belief the outcomes and people outcomes must be actionable. Actual-time information is an unbelievable validation instrument and enabler of motion. With 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 surroundings because it seems like as we speak is a superpower – and the way forward for cybersecurity.
With Tanium, real-time information means that you can work together together with your endpoints and put AI’s information to work. It offers actions based mostly on historic and present information and learnings to attract conclusions for the longer term. We do that with our endpoint administration agent, which constantly collects and transmits information to a centralized supply of reality, no matter whether or not the system is on-line or offline. Our Tanium Knowledge Service collects data constantly and routinely from the registered sensors of all endpoints. That ensures the information that our AI capabilities are utilizing is genuinely real-time information.
What ought to firms consider when deciding on AI-driven safety suppliers to make sure they’re getting strong, real-time options?
First, organizations ought to have interaction with as many suppliers as potential. Everyone seems to be investing in AI proper now. There isn’t any standardized, one-size-fits-all answer to utilizing this know-how, and it’s price investigating all of the completely different approaches to AI.
Secondly, organizations want to grasp the place they need to focus. Whether or not it’s worker productiveness, sooner coding, note-taking, or higher parameter safety, they want to determine their highest precedence somewhat 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 information coverage. AI requires considerably extra onboarding than earlier instruments, and most organizations might want to create the processes for that nicely 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 complicated IT environments?
Already, AEM is delivering autonomous capabilities throughout our current platform. Utilizing real-time information and insights from tens of millions of endpoints, we share suggestions and allow organizations to automate adjustments 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 information.
That’s the place we’re proper now, however we’re not completed. We have now plans for the way we’ll proceed to sort out complicated 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 commonplace 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 also help them construct a basis for automating their processes even additional.
How does Tanium’s platform handle the visibility and management challenges that many organizations face as their digital environments develop?
The most important hurdle for a corporation is complete visibility— figuring out 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 also help you see what apps you’re working and collect details about each system in simply seconds. That stage of connectivity and real-time entry to information 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 remove 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 whole 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 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, seeking to pursue a profession in AI and cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity and AI are massive fields so strive plenty 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 can assist you construct confidence my recommendation for anybody, not simply girls, is to establish what expertise are lacking on a workforce and work in the direction of filling that hole. Filling within the gaps may also 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.