Hi, my name is Kaushal Bhavsar.
My tryst with AI started back during my college days when I programmed a “chat assistant” in Turbo C. Of course, the intelligence was not at par – it was simply a long much of if-else statements based on “training data” from text files.
The AI space was really empty in those days, until IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer beat chess maestro Gary Kasporov while cooking up some of its own moves which it wasn’t trained for.
This news got me all worked up, but honestly, there weren’t any takers (or jobs) for AI. Data Science was the official AI-replacement for number-crunching SaaS systems. Regression, classification, etc. didn’t give me enough “joy” – but my interest in CyberSecurity finally drew me to my destiny.
I began exploring ways to use AI in CyberSecurity, and I was looking for a strong problem to solve. That’s when my mentor told me about “Insider Threats” which became my PhD topic soon after.
Insider Threats were/are a unique security problem, because – practically, they are just one of your regular employees – until one day they decide to take you down or steal a chunk of your pie. The only way to detect or even stop them is to monitor their behaviour.
In my PhD Thesis, I presented an algorithm using LSTM-RNN to predict Insider Threats, by modelling their computer usage behaviour. You can find more of these in the research section on this website.
While doing my research, I was working for Sucuri (a part of GoDaddy) and helping them fight web malware. I developed a new patent-pending automation system for dynamic analysis of JavaScript malware.
At present, I am a part of the AI team at GoDaddy, using my knowledge of AI and Security to build resilient systems. On this blog, I will share my journey of accepting AI as the next frontier of technology and my path in days to come.
Keep reading!
