Harman Kaur is the Vice President of AI at Tanium, a frontrunner in Autonomous Endpoint Management (AEM) with the industry’s only true real-time platform for AI. She brings over a decade of experience in leadership, technical innovation, and cybersecurity, gained through her tenure at Tanium and repair within the US Air Force.
In her previous role as Chief of Staff at Tanium, Kaur worked closely with the Executive Chairman, CEO, and executive team to drive strategic growth, technology alliances, and organizational execution, leveraging her deep expertise in cybersecurity and IT.
Earlier, Kaur held multiple roles inside Tanium’s field engineering organization, where she managed key accounts and contributed to product development and innovation, furthering the corporate’s mission to supply cutting-edge solutions for endpoint management.
What initially sparked your interest in AI and cybersecurity, and the way did that zeal evolve right into a profession that led you to develop into VP of AI at Tanium?
I joined the military after I was 18 for the chance to construct a life the way in which that I desired to do it. That allowed me the chance to review different fields like law, before meeting a mentor who inspired me to learn learn how to use computers. That modified my life. I ended up getting a level which was a mixture of Computer Science and Business. Then, with that have, I worked in a cyber intelligence military unit. That jump-started my profession and led me to work at Tanium when it was still a startup.
Since then, I’ve worn many various hats at Tanium. I’ve worked in technical roles and been Chief of Staff for our Chairman and CEO. Ultimately, my interest in constructing latest products with emerging and latest technologies is what drew me to my current role.
While you may study cybersecurity and AI at school, those of us who find ourselves in these spaces or who’re interested by them need to carve our own paths. It’s a field where all of us bring different backgrounds and expertise to the table, and what really sets you apart is the way you apply that context and knowledge.
How does your dual experience within the military and AI intersect when it comes to decision-making, leadership, and problem-solving?
My dual experience within the military and AI intersects in decision-making, leadership, and problem-solving. Within the military, I honed the power to make quick, strategic decisions under pressure, working in diverse settings like hospitals, maintenance and flying units, cyber, and even on staff for Generals. At Tanium, I’ve focused on constructing teams, products, and partnerships, which requires a more analytical approach. This mix of experiences gives me a singular perspective and the boldness to beat any challenge.
You’ve mentioned that automation shall be essential for cybersecurity teams by 2025. What specific developments do you foresee making automation indispensable in the approaching years?
By itself, automation helps a corporation scale cybersecurity practices. The more we adopt additional devices, software and systems, the more automation can enhance and consistently implement security policies across large environments while identifying patterns to create higher, more proactive defense.
Automation also provides critical insights into operating systems through higher data aggregation. This permits our security teams to optimize their policies at a time when technology is continually changing and introducing latest threats.
AI takes automation capabilities to a brand new level. The mixture of the 2 allows organizations to handle repetitive, mundane tasks in order that human cybersecurity experts can give attention to high-impact work. Coupled with real-time data on a corporation’s operating environment because it looks today, AI and automation can detect threats and remediate issues faster than before.
In your view, what’s probably the most significant obstacle for firms aiming to implement automation of their cybersecurity practices, and the way can they prepare to beat it?
Organizations have to contemplate the risks this technology introduces, especially in terms of identity and authentication. They’ll need to contemplate learn how to handle these latest threats related to automation. They’ll also must introduce strong governance mechanisms and transparent feedback loops in order that security teams can monitor what AI and automation are literally doing, adjusting policies as needed.
What advancements in AI will Tanium be pursuing to reinforce endpoint security in 2025? Could you elaborate on the role of automation and AI in autonomous endpoint management?
With autonomous endpoint management, or AEM, we’re automating every core IT workflow: endpoint management, sure, but additionally security, incident response, patching, change management, and performance monitoring. Automated systems can care for the mundane, repetitive work involved in those processes. Then, we’re coupling our unmatched ability to supply real-time data on a corporation’s operating environment with AI that may surface critical insights on real threats and vulnerabilities as they’re happening and steps for remediation. Our goal, so to talk, is to show the keys of the mundane tasks over to automation and let AI handle threat detection in order that cybersecurity teams can give attention to executing on remediation faster. Their trust within the product empowers them to give attention to business-critical work.
By way of what we’re pursuing in 2025, first, we’ll proceed to speculate in higher automation. We wish to push boundaries and make automation much more of a force multiplier than it already is in addition to constructing agents. We’re pondering: How can we make it larger? How can we make it so robust and so easy that our human cybersecurity teams can focus less on the mundane work and more on the high-impact work?
We’ll also expand to prioritize visibility into proactive cybersecurity. We wish to provide our customers visibility into things before they go improper. That, together with using data for higher decision-making, is a serious focus for us. We wish to provide actionable recommendations that organizations can take before they’re impacted by the subsequent big vulnerability.
Why is real-time data critical to creating AI in security effective? How does Tanium ensure its AI capabilities are genuinely leveraging real-time data?
AI helps us enhance productivity and do things faster. Nonetheless, there may be a level of hesitation with this technology. Organizations need to be sure that they’ll trust the outcomes and people results must be actionable. Real-time data is an incredible validation tool and enabler of motion. Having the ability to find issues after they occur and using that information to make sure they don’t occur again is useful, but with the ability to find issues as they occur and remediating those issues in real-time with the context of your actual operating environment because it looks like today is a superpower – and the longer term of cybersecurity.
With Tanium, real-time data lets you interact together with your endpoints and put AI’s knowledge to work. It gives actions based on historical and current data and learnings to attract conclusions for the longer term. We do that with our endpoint management agent, which repeatedly collects and transmits data to a centralized source of truth, no matter whether the device is online or offline. Our Tanium Data Service collects information repeatedly and mechanically from the registered sensors of all endpoints. That ensures the information that our AI capabilities are using is genuinely real-time data.
What should firms evaluate when choosing AI-driven security providers to make sure they’re getting robust, real-time solutions?
First, organizations should engage with as many providers as possible. Everyone seems to be investing in AI straight away. There isn’t a standardized, one-size-fits-all solution to using this technology, and it’s value investigating all different approaches to AI.
Secondly, organizations need to grasp where they need to focus. Whether it’s worker productivity, faster coding, note-taking, or higher parameter security, they should work out their highest priority reasonably than attempting to boil the ocean.
After aligning on that, it’s necessary to create a framework around onboarding. Simply buying an answer and turning it on won’t work, even when a vendor says it can. Security teams must take into consideration access control and data policy. AI requires significantly more onboarding than previous tools, and most organizations might want to create the processes for that well ahead of implementation.
Could you provide a vision for Tanium’s roadmap, particularly the way it goals to realize autonomous endpoint management and streamline complex IT environments?
Already, AEM is delivering autonomous capabilities across our existing platform. Using real-time data and insights from tens of millions of endpoints, we share recommendations and enable organizations to automate changes on those endpoints so that they can streamline their operations and improve security wholesale. AEM is a comprehensive platform, and it empowers our customers to take motion at the precise time and to have faith of their decisions, that are based on real-time, scaled data.
That’s where we’re straight away, but we’re not finished. We’ve got plans for the way we’ll proceed to tackle complex cybersecurity problems. Moving forward, we’re specializing in the convergence of two things to bolster cybersecurity: AI and IT operations. Loads of providers mix AI and security, and we’re doing the identical already, but we also need to be the gold standard for AI in IT operations. Personally, I’d wish to see each Tanium customer have at the very least one process they’ve fully automated. Hopefully, that first step might help them construct a foundation for automating their processes even further.
How does Tanium’s platform address the visibility and control challenges that many organizations face as their digital environments expand?
The most important hurdle for a corporation is comprehensive visibility— knowing what devices are in your organization and plugged into your network.
That is something we’re already addressing with Tanium. Our core power is real-time visibility and interaction with devices across a corporation’s digital ecosystem. We are able to aid you see what apps you’re running and gather details about every device in only seconds. That level of connectivity and real-time access to data from all endpoints enhances each visibility and control, that are again challenges for organizations as we see digital environments expand significantly. It’s our mission to eliminate those problems.
We take that mission a step further by empowering organizations to make a change, such patching a machine, in a matter of minutes. Tanium allows organizations to interact with their entire digital estate at scale. For instance, if there’s a security incident, they’ll see what happened in real-time and take motion immediately, so customers don’t even feel the impact. It’s quick and it’s seamless.
What advice would you give to aspiring professionals, especially women, seeking to pursue a profession in AI and cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity and AI are large fields so try lots of various things. These fields may feel very intimidating but remember everyone seems to be attempting to figure it out. To aid you construct confidence my advice for anyone, not only women, is to discover what skills are missing on a team and work towards filling that gap. Filling within the gaps might help construct confidence in yourself as an issue solver while also making you indispensable.
