Prashanthi Gutha

Autonomous Cyber-Resilience: When AI Defends, Decides, and Evolves Without Human Intervention

Abstract:  

The escalating sophistication of cyber threats, coupled with a critical shortage of security professionals, demands a paradigm shift from reactive defense to autonomous cyber-resilience. This keynote explores the convergence of five research frontiers AI-driven threat detection, privacy-preserving federated learning, secure multi-agent systems, deep learning-based intrusion detection, and blockchain-enabled data sharing into a unified self-defending ecosystem. We examine how autonomous AI agents can detect, reason about, and neutralize threats in real time without human intervention, while maintaining transparency and regulatory compliance. The talk highlights open challenges including explainability, adversarial robustness, and human-AI trust calibration, offering actionable recommendations for researchers and practitioners working toward a future where intelligent systems autonomously protect our digital infrastructure.

Profile:
Prashanthi Gutha is a technology leader specializing in secure, scalable, cloud native enterprise applications across healthcare and financial services. She has led major digital transformation initiatives, including designing event‑driven frameworks for real‑time clinical trial operations and modernizing legacy platforms into resilient microservices that support thousands of daily users. Her expertise spans secure software engineering, identity and access management, cloud‑native architecture, privacy‑by‑design, cybersecurity, and responsible AI adoption. An IEEE Senior Member, she contributes to the research and technology community as a reviewer, scholar, and invited expert in emerging technologies and AI.