Asymmetric Security

This stream focuses on building realistic defensive cybersecurity benchmarks utilizing data from Asymmetric Security's work on real-world incidents.

Stream overview

Existing cybersecurity benchmarks lack realism, rarely testing how models behave in realistic security scenarios. This is especially challenging in cybersecurity because most relevant data is private.

Asymmetric Security responds to real cyber incidents and therefore holds data not available in the public domain. We would like to work with MATS scholars to build realistic benchmarks grounded in these real cyber incidents.

Location during program:

SF Bay Area

Mentors

Zainab Ali Majid (Zainab)
Asymmetric Security
,
Co-Founder
Capability and Propensity Evaluations
AI Systems Security

Zainab is the co-founder of Asymmetric Security. She was previously a cybersecurity analyst at Stroz Friedberg, where she investigated some of the largest cybersecurity breaches of the past decade (e.g., Cambridge Analytica). She has also published at NeurIPS on AI cybersecurity evaluations. Zainab holds a master’s degree in Physics from Oxford University.

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Alex Chan
Asymmetric Security
,
Chief Scientist
Capability and Propensity Evaluations
AI Systems Security

Alex Chan is Chief Scientist at Asymmetric Security, working on AI for cyberdefense and incident response. Previously, Chan was Director of Software Engineering at Salesforce, leading reinforcement-learning post-training for GUI agents.

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Fellows we are looking for

Essential:

  • Experience implementing AI model evaluations.

Preferred:

  • At least one year of professional software engineering experience.
  • Strong interest in AI cybersecurity.

Scholars can collaborate with other MATS scholars and can find collaborators on their own. Asymmetric Security staff may also engage deeply. 

Project selection

We will assign the project direction; scholars will have significant tactical freedom.