Wired USA - 11.2019

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has proven ideal in the search

for new ways to address secu-

rity challenges.

The team is now creating

algorithms that can self-heal,

and operate autonomously for

long periods of time without

regular updates—for example,

at sea, or in spacecrafts.

Closer to home, the R&D lab

has transformed how enter-

prises respond to fast-acting

threats with its AI Autonomous

Response technology. By taking

intelligent action to neutral-

ize these threats—including

at night and on weekends—

Autonomous Response is

consistently addressing threats

without human intervention.

“In the long term, we think

it’s going to become a war of

algorithms. You can’t bring a

human to a machine fight any

more,” says Heinemeyer.

And that’s what Darktrace’s

R&D team is aiming to solve

for, building more sophisti-

cated algorithms to combat a

future in which machines—not

humans—are the hackers.

To read the full story of how

Darktrace uses AI to fight

cyber-crime, visit

wired.com/Darktrace

DARKTRACE WAS FOUNDED

in 2013, when members of the
UK intelligence community
approached leading mathe-
maticians from the University
of Cambridge with a prob-
lem: the existing approach to
cybersecurity was failing.

The resulting solution was a
system that has shifted the
industry paradigm. Rather
than relying on pre-defined
data sets to spot future cyber-
threats, Darktrace uses AI to
understand the organizations
that it protects.

Max Heinemeyer, Darktrace’s
Director of Threat Hunting,
is quick to point out the com-
pany’s diverse team, a natural
outcome of its academics-
meet-agents background.

“I look across the office and
see developers and coders,
hardcore double-PhD machine
learning experts, and what we
call the ‘dev-analysts’ team,”
says Heinemeyer. “They all
talk to each other—all the
time. This flow of information
is so important to break down
the knowledge barriers.”

Largely in their twenties, these
threat hunters come from
backgrounds across mathe-
matics, data science, linguis-
tics, and other areas of study.
The diverse collection of talent

HOW MACHINE LEARNING EXPERTS ARE PREPARING TO FIGHT BACK

AGAINST AI-POWERED CYBERATTACKS

Darktrace R&D:

Academics

Meet Agents

Photos by Jonathan Browning