Harman Kaur is Vice President of AI at Tanium, a leader in Autonomous Endpoint Management (AEM) with the industry’s only true AI real-time platform. She has more than 10 years of experience in leadership, technology innovation, and cybersecurity gained through her tenure at Tanium and her service in the U.S. Air Force.
Kaur, who previously served as Chief of Staff at Tanium, leveraged her deep expertise in cybersecurity and IT to work closely with the Chairman, CEO and executive team to drive strategic growth, technology partnerships and organizational execution.
Previously, Kaur held multiple roles within Tanium’s field engineering organization, managing key accounts and contributing to product development and innovation to further the company’s mission to provide cutting-edge solutions for endpoint management.
What initially sparked your interest in AI and cybersecurity, and how did that passion evolve into a career that led you to become Vice President of AI at Tanium?
I joined the military at age 18 to have the opportunity to make my life the way I wanted. This gave me the opportunity to study different fields, such as law, before meeting a mentor who inspired me to learn how to use computers. It changed my life. I ended up getting a degree that was a mix of computer science and business. Then, based on that experience, I ended up working in the cyber intelligence unit. That launched my career and led me to work at Tanium, which was still a startup.
Since then I have worn many different hats at Tanium. I held a technical role and served as Chief of Staff to the Chairman and CEO. Ultimately, my interest in new technologies and using them to create new products led me to my current role.
You can study cybersecurity and AI in school, but those in or interested in these spaces have to forge their own path. This is a field where we all bring different backgrounds and expertise, and what really sets you apart is how you apply that context and knowledge.
How do your dual experiences in the military and AI intersect in terms of decision-making, leadership, and problem-solving?
My dual experiences in the military and AI intersect in decision-making, leadership, and problem-solving. In the military, I worked in a variety of environments, including hospitals, maintenance and flight units, cyber, and general staffs, honing my ability to make quick, strategic decisions under pressure. At Tanium, we focused on building teams, products, and partnerships that required a more analytical approach. This combination of experiences gives me a unique perspective and confidence to overcome any challenge.
You mentioned that automation will be essential for cybersecurity teams by 2025. What specific developments do you foresee that will make automation indispensable in the coming years?
Automation in itself can help organizations scale their cybersecurity practices. The more additional devices, software, and systems you adopt, the more automation you can do to strengthen and consistently enforce your security policies across your large environment while identifying patterns to create better proactive defenses.
Automation also provides valuable insights into your operating system through better data aggregation. This allows security teams to optimize their policies as technology constantly changes and new threats are introduced.
AI takes automation to a new level. Combining the two allows organizations to handle repetitive, routine tasks, freeing up human cybersecurity professionals to focus on high-impact tasks. AI and automation combined with real-time data about the environment in which today’s organizations operate can detect threats and remediate issues faster than ever before.
What do you think are the biggest obstacles for companies looking to implement automation in their cybersecurity operations, and how can they prepare to overcome them?
Organizations should consider the risks posed by this technology, especially as it relates to identity and authentication. We need to consider how to deal with these new threats related to automation. They must also introduce strong governance mechanisms and transparent feedback loops so that security teams can monitor what AI and automation is actually doing and adjust policies as needed.
What advancements in AI will Tanium pursue to strengthen endpoint security in 2025? Can you elaborate on the role of automation and AI in autonomous endpoint management?
With Autonomous Endpoint Management (AEM), we are automating all core IT workflows, including endpoint management, security, incident response, patching, change management, and performance monitoring. Automated systems can handle the mundane and repetitive tasks associated with these processes. Then, by combining AI with our unparalleled ability to provide real-time data about an organization’s operating environment, we can surface critical insights into the real threats and vulnerabilities that arise and steps to take to remediate them. Our goal, so to speak, is to shift the core of routine tasks to automation and let AI handle threat detection, allowing cybersecurity teams to focus faster on executing remediation. Trust in our products allows us to focus on tasks that matter to our business.
Our goals for 2025 are: First, we will continue to invest in better automation. We want to push the boundaries and not only build agents, but also make automation an even more powerful force than it already is. We are thinking. How can we make it bigger? How can we make it powerful and simple so that human cybersecurity teams can focus more on high-impact tasks rather than routine tasks?
We will also expand to prioritize visibility into proactive cybersecurity. We want to give our customers visibility into things before problems arise. This is our main focus, along with using data to make better decisions. We want to provide actionable recommendations that organizations can take before they are affected by the next generation of vulnerabilities.
Why is real-time data important to effectively leverage AI for security? How does Tanium ensure that its AI capabilities actually leverage real-time data?
AI helps improve productivity and speed up work. However, there is a certain amount of hesitation about this technology. Organizations want to be able to trust the results, and those results must be actionable. Real-time data is an amazing verification tool and enabler of action. Not only is it helpful to catch problems after they occur and use that information to prevent them from happening again, but you can also find problems as soon as they occur and troubleshoot them in real time and in the context of your actual operating environment. Today it seems to be a superpower and the future of cybersecurity.
Tanium allows you to interact with endpoints through real-time data and leverage AI knowledge. It provides actions to draw conclusions about the future based on past and present data and learnings. We do this through endpoint management agents that continuously collect data and transmit it to a centralized source, regardless of whether the device is online or offline. Tanium Data Service continuously and automatically collects information from registered sensors on all endpoints. This ensures that the data used by AI features is truly real-time.
What should enterprises evaluate when choosing an AI-based security provider to ensure a robust, real-time solution?
First, organizations should work with as many suppliers as possible. Everyone is investing in AI now. There is no single, standardized solution for using this technology, and the different approaches to AI are all worth investigating.
Second, organizations need to understand where they want to focus. Whether it’s employee productivity, faster coding, note taking, or better parameter security, you need to figure out your top priorities rather than trying to boil the ocean.
Once you have this aligned, it’s important to create a framework for onboarding. Simply buying a solution and turning it on doesn’t work, even if the vendor says so. Security teams need to think about access control and data policies. AI requires significantly more onboarding than previous tools, and most organizations will need to create that process prior to implementation.
Can you tell us about your vision for Tanium’s roadmap, specifically how it aims to achieve autonomous endpoint management and simplify complex IT environments?
AEM is already providing autonomous capabilities across its existing platforms. Using real-time data and insights from millions of endpoints, we share recommendations and help organizations automate changes to those endpoints to streamline operations and improve overall security. AEM is a comprehensive platform that helps customers take timely action and feel confident in their decisions based on real-time, scaled data.
We’re at this stage now, but we’re not done yet. We have a plan for how we will continue to address complex cybersecurity challenges. Going forward, we are focusing on the convergence of the two – AI and IT operations – to strengthen cybersecurity. Many vendors are combining AI and security, and we are already doing the same, but we want to become the standard for AI in IT operations. Personally, I would like to see every Tanium customer have at least one fully automated process. We hope that this first step will help you build a foundation for further automating the process.
How does Tanium’s platform solve the visibility and control challenges many organizations face as their digital environments expand?
The biggest obstacle for organizations is comprehensive visibility into what devices are in the organization and connected to the network.
This is something we are already solving with Tanium. Our core competency is real-time visibility and interaction with devices across an organization’s digital ecosystem. In just a few seconds, we’ll help you see which apps you’re running and collect information about all your devices. This level of connectivity and real-time access to data from all endpoints improves both visibility and control. This again becomes a challenge for organizations as they see their digital landscape expanding significantly. It is our job to eliminate these problems.
We take this mission a step further by helping organizations make changes, such as patching systems, in minutes. Tanium allows organizations to interact with their entire digital assets at scale. For example, if a security incident occurs, customers won’t even feel the shock because they can see what happened in real time and take action immediately. It’s fast and smooth.
What advice would you give to aspiring professionals, especially women, who want to pursue a career in AI and cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity and AI are big fields, so try different things. These fields can also feel very intimidating, but remember that everyone is trying to figure it out. To help build confidence, my advice for everyone, not just women, is to figure out what skills your team is lacking and work to fill those gaps. Filling in the gaps can help build your confidence as a problem solver while also making you indispensable.
Thank you for the great interview. Readers who want to know more should visit Tanium.
