Dr. Fatima

Abstract: The cyber threat landscape is constantly evolving, with new attack vectors emerging alongside increasingly sophisticated techniques and tools for defense. With the growing global cyber-physical continuum and the rapid digitization of data, systems, and communication channels, organizations are increasingly relying on technologies such as virtualization, cloud services, Generative AI, and Agentic AI. Emerging concerns including insider threats, SaaS vulnerabilities, adversarial effects targeting Generative AI, and the security and evaluation of Agentic AI systems have gained significant attention in recent years. At the same time, the increasing autonomy and complexity of AI-driven systems introduce new challenges around security, trust, accountability, and control. The traditional boundaries between human users, applications, data, and intelligent systems are becoming increasingly blurred. This evolution introduces new forms of insider exposure and creates significant challenges for detecting, understanding, and responding to anomalous behaviour. These challenges become even more pronounced as AI-driven systems increasingly interact with enterprise data, applications, tools, and communication channels.

This talk will provide an overview of the current and emerging cybersecurity threat landscape and the challenges faced by enterprises in addressing these threats. It will examine the evolving insider-threat landscape, including human, compromised, and AI-enabled insider risks, and discuss how behavioural analytics and machine learning can be used to identify anomalous activities and emerging patterns. Furthermore, particular emphasis will be placed on Agentic AI, including potential security pitfalls and emerging attack surfaces, the role of guardrails and evaluation mechanisms in enabling safe and responsible AI deployment, and the governance approaches needed to manage these technologies at enterprise scale.

Biography:

Dr. Fatima Hussain is a Senior Member of IEEE, an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer, and a Distinguished Research Fellow at National PK-CERT. She is a security governance strategist with extensive expertise in Insider Threat, Risk Profiling, SaaS Security Architecture, Agentic AI, and AI Governance. She is an inventor and author of numerous industrial patents, research papers, and books, and has a proven track record of leading enterprise-wide, AI-enabled research initiatives and translating emerging technologies into proof-of-concept solutions that address real-world business challenges. Dr. Hussain holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, specializing in secure wireless communications. She serves as an Adjunct Professor and Research Supervisor at Toronto Metropolitan University. Currently, Dr. Hussain is a Principal SaaS Security Architect at RBC in Toronto, leading secure SaaS adoption and governance frameworks, with a focus on AI-enabled security architecture, risk modeling, and governance of Agentic AI. Previously, she headed RBC’s User Behavior Analytics and Insider Threat team, developing AI/ML models to detect and mitigate data loss from insider threats. She also brings extensive practical experience applying AI, machine learning, NLP, and LLMs to security analytics, data correlation, visualization, SaaS Security, and AI Governance.

Email:

Address:RBC Canada, , Toronto, Canada