AI in Cybersecurity: Savior, Saboteur, and the Shades Between
Schedule: 5:00 to 7:00 on 5th January
Artificial intelligence is developing rapidly, igniting conversations and dividing opinions about its beneficial and disruptive potential across industries. In cybersecurity, AI is a double-edged sword: it can be used for good by defenders to prevent cyberattacks, but bad actors can also use it to launch more sophisticated and effective attacks. This panel will bring together cybersecurity experts from industry and academia to discuss these nuances. We will explore how AI has been used to design robust cyber defences while at the same time create intensive cyberattacks that are more difficult to detect and potential defences. We will discuss the rapid rise of Generative AI and its implications on cybersecurity. It is common knowledge that AI systems can exhibit biases that stem from their programming and data sources. We will explore the impact of AI bias on cybersecurity. The discussion will also touch upon AI regulation through a cybersecurity lens.
Sandeep Kumar Shukla received the Ph.D. degree from the State University of New York at Albany, NY, USA. He is currently a Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering department of IIT Kanpur. He has worked at GTE Labs as a principal member of Technical Staff, as Senior Staff Design Engineer at the Intel Corporation, as research faculty at the University of California, Irvine and as a professor of Computer Engineer at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg USA. His major research areas are cyber security, cyber-resilient system design, risk assessment, and critical infrastructure security and Blockchain Technology. Prof. Shukla published over 300 peer-reviewed conference papers, journal articles, book chapters, 12 books, and worked as an editor for several noted Journals and Technical publications. Sandeep is an IEEE Fellow and ACM Distinguished Scientist.
Sailaja Vadlamudi is SAP Lab's first Global Application Security Lead. She is a seasoned security leader with over 20 years of richly diverse experience. She has formulated and led the execution of strategic enterprise-wide transformations and improved security posture with a higher return on investment. She is the founder of SWICS - SAP Women in Cyber Security, and a non-profit organization called WiCSP- Women in Cyber Security and Privacy aiming to raise cyber awareness for Kids, Young Girls & Women to educate them in pursuing career opportunities in Cybersecurity.
Sujit Gujar is an Associate Professor at the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH) where he holds the CA Technologies Faculty Chair position. Prior to IIITH, he has held positions at EPFL, Switzerland, IISC Bangalore and the Xerox Research Centre India. He completed his Ph.D. from IISC Bangalore. Sujit's expertise is in game theory, machine learning, deep learning, optimization, and blockchains. His research primarily focuses on building theory for modern real-world AI applications and making AI systems fair, ethically sound, and strategy proof.
Karthik Rao Bappanad is a technologist with a keen interest in public policy. He currently heads CySecK, which is Karnataka state’s K-Tech Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security, a partnership between the state government and Indian Institute of Science. Karthik is also a Fellow of UK Government's Chevening programme, specialising in Cyber Security. He likes to work in the intersection of technology, policy and ethics. He has more than 23 years of IT experience, with the last 10 years in Cyber Security. He started as a coder, moved on to systems integration and then project and programme management. He has 10 years of international experience across five countries and four continents. He has managed end-to-end cyber security programme across various domains like SOC, identity and access management, cyber risk assessments, infrastructure security, application security, Governance, Risk and Compliance.
Himanshu Tyagi received his Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA. He is currently an Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. His research interests include information theory, statistics, cryptography, machine learning, distributed systems, and socio-technical systems.