Artificial Intelligence (AI) constitutes an umbrella of techniques and has proven to provide flexible, adaptable solutions to a wide variety of security problems. These techniques typically include Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic, Evolutionary Computation, Data Mining, Cellular Automata, Immunological Computation, Game Theory, and other computational intelligence models. Over the last 30 years, AI-based approaches have been used to build tools for real-time monitoring, malware detection, log analysis, intrusion detection, etc., providing cross-linking solutions to different cybersecurity applications. This talk will cover lessons learned over the years on the growing attack landscape and some of our seminal works on AI-guided cyber defenses. It will highlight the effectiveness and limitations of pre-trained Generic LLMs and argue the need for non-LLM-based diverse approaches in identifying and mitigating emerging cyber threats.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Dipankar Dasgupta is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Memphis since January 1997. He has extensively worked on the applications of bio-inspired and machine learning approaches to cyber defense. His groundbreaking works, including digital immunity, negative authentication, cloud insurance model, and auth-spectrum, have earned recognition in Computer World Magazine and other media outlets. He received research funding from different federal agencies including NSF, DARPA, IARPA, NSA, NAVY, ONR, DoD and DHS/FEMA. At the National Cyber Leap Year Summit in 2009, Dr. Dasgupta served as a Co-Chair for the Health-Inspired Network Defense working group, the results of which have led to a new research program within the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology. With over 300 publications (including 4 patents), 22000+ citations, and an h-index of 68, Dr. Dasgupta's multidisciplinary research is highly acclaimed. He has received numerous awards, including the 2012 Willard R. Sparks Eminent Faculty Award and the 2014 ACM SIGEVO Impact Award. He also received five best paper awards in different international conferences and has organized Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Cyber Security at IEEE SSCI during 2007-2023. Dr. Dasgupta is an IEEE Fellow, AIIA Fellow and NAI Fellow, an ACM Distinguished Speaker (2015-2020), an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer (2022-2024) and NSF-Fulbright Distinguished Scholar. He regularly serves as a panelist and keynote speaker and offers tutorials in leading computer science conferences and has given more than 350 invited talks in different universities and industries.
