Session

Towards an AI-based Security Consultant for SMEs

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are often easy targets for attackers due to their limited budgets and lack of specialized security personnel. To bridge this capability gap, we are developing an AI Security Consultant as a cost-effective alternative to expensive human security consultants.

Our solution combines the automated analysis of an SME’s infrastructure with a questionnaire to obtain the security-relevant attributes that build a comprehensive digital twin of an SME. The digital twin enables a locally hosted Large Language Model (LLM) to perform a risk assessment and to generate tailored mitigating security controls. The corresponding implementation instructions have to be detailed and easy to execute by the potentially inexperienced personnel of SMEs. This practical approach goes beyond generic standards and best practices, empowering SMEs to effectively enhance their cybersecurity posture and resilience.

About the speakers

Prof. Dr. Ariane Trammell

Prof. Dr. Ariane Trammell

Head of Information Security Research at ZHAW
Prof. Dr. Ariane Trammell is an expert in the field of information security, currently serving as the Head of the Research Area Information Security at the ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur, Switzerland. In addition, she is the Deputy Head of the Institute of Computer Science (InIT) at ZHAW.
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Maurice Amon

Maurice Amon

Research Assistant at ZHAW
Maurice Amon works as a research assistant within the Information Security Group (ISE) at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) in Winterthur. He holds a B. Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Bern and is in the final stage of completing his M. Sc. in the same discipline. His academic and professional interests center on NLP, AI Software Engineering and LLMs, including their architecture.
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