I have 27 years of industrial and academic research experience in Cyber Security. I am a Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO Data61 and lead the Cyber Security Automation and Orchestration team. I also lead the Security Automation and Orchestration Theme of the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre.
I had PhD in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, USA 2007. From 2007 to 2013, I was a Senior Researcher and Team Leader focusing on AI and Cyber Security at the TU-Berlin, Germany. For five years, I worked as an ECARD lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia. As part of these roles, I led or participated in many large impactful projects (i.e., multi-national and with more than five partners/countries) in Europe funded by the European Commission and in Australia, supported by industry and government.
I am passionate about discovering unusual solutions to challenging real-life Cyber Security problems using AI and Cryptography. My lifelong ambition is operationalising autonomous security (RPI, TU-Berlin, QUT and CSIRO). I assumed a lead role on robust distributed ML to optimise cyber and quantum security through which I deliver the AI and Cyber Security priority focus of Data61 in Defence and Industry application domains.
I focused on several frontier topics relating to real-life problems that I exposed myself and my team to through high-calibre external and CSIRO's Future Science Platform (FSP) projects. These started with an ongoing interest in detecting and preventing ML-based vulnerabilities in domains within their operational settings (with Defence Science and Technology Group's NGT Fund) and new methods to distribute those ML algorithms securely (with Precision Health FSP and Australian Federal Police). Next, I focused on transferring ML algorithms to text-domain and using large language models to solve challenging cyber security problems such as software and supply chain security, threat hunting, incidence response, ransomware prevention and critical infrastructure security (with Cyber Security CRC, The US Army, 6G Security, Google and Defence). I also extended these results to physics/quantum-inspired ML and optimising quantum communications and Encryption (with Quantum Tech. FSP). Finally, I sought new ways to optimise large models for small systems with integrated compression and encryption methods (with Quantum Tech. FSP, Julius Award and Space FSP).
I completed CSIRO's Experienced Leader Program (ELP) and Spark Leader Labs to mature my leadership skills on top of the leadership skills I built over 27 years on three continents. At CSIRO, I established a research team on Cyber Security Automation and Orchestration. I grew its size from 4 to 20+ highly skilled research and engineering staff.
Research Interests
ML Optimised Cyber and Quantum Security:
Secure ML
Malware Detection and Prevention
SW and Protocol Security
CII Security
Threat Modelling and Hunting,
Risk Assessment
Automated Defence
Applied and Malicious Cryptography
Quantum Security
Technologies:
Data Airlock - A Framework for the Model-to-Data paradigm for safe operations on illegal-to-share datasets.
MaLFraDA - A variant of the Data Airlock Framework enabling distributed analysis of illegal-to-share datasets.
buGFinder - A containerization cloud-based software vulnerability and compliance analysis framework using large language models.
VulnGuard - A variant of buGFinder for software security assessment in 5G/6G stacks.
RFSH - An innovative ransomware prevention solution for secure cloud storage.
PIF/OptimShare (NSW iAward Merit) Innovative tools for privacy-preserving data sharing.
THRD - ML-based alert triage and threat hunting framework for heterogenous data lakes.
ACDC Range and Avatar - An IT/OT Range for Red/Blue teaming events and ML-based Incident Response Avatar.
SmartShield (NSW iAward Winner) - ML-based solution stack for preventing phishing detection and triage.
CertainID - A biometric-based security solution developed with Kollakorn.