Security Of AI, By AI and For AI: Charting New Territories in AI-Centered Cybersecurity Research

The rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and the unyielding demand for their transformative applications have ushered in significant opportunities for security and privacy research and innovations. There is an urgent need for innovative and practical solutions to protect data and other assets to support the training and utilization of large, complicated machine learning (ML) models in a scalable and cost-effective manner ("Security For AI"). In the meantime, substantial research efforts are focused on understanding the security and privacy implications of AI systems, particularly identification of vulnerabilities in ML models and mitigation of associated risks ("Security Of AI"). Furthermore, cutting-edge AI technologies are increasingly being deployed to enhance the security of computing systems, offering intelligent protection and more effective defenses against real-world threats ("Security By AI").

In this presentation, I will use our research in these areas to demonstrate how AI innovations have expanded the horizons of security and privacy research. For instance, under the theme "Security For AI," I will provide an overview of ongoing research at the Center for Distributed Confidential Computing (CDCC) --- one of the largest initiatives funded by the US National Science Foundation aimed at advancing practical, scalable data-in-use protection. This initiative is poised to have a transformative impact on AI research. Regarding "Security Of AI," I will discuss our investigations into Trojan threats to ML models, exploring the fundamentality of this emerging security risk, its defensibility in particular. In the context of "Security By AI," I will showcase how AI and ML technologies are revolutionizing the detection and prediction of security threats within carrier networks---a vital infrastructure---by automating the analysis of their documentations. Lastly, I will discuss potential future directions in the vast space of AI-centered cybersecurity research and innovations.