This workshop explored opportunities in the area of future intelligent autonomous agents in cyber operations. Such agents may potentially serve as fundamental game-changers in the way the cyber defence and offense are conducted. Their autonomous reasoning and cyber actions for prevention, detection and active response to cyber threats may become critical enablers for the field of cyber security. Cyber weapons (malware) rapidly grow in their sophistication, and in their ability to act autonomously and to adapt to specific conditions encountered in a friendly system/network. Current practices of cyber defense against advanced threats continue to be heavily reliant on largely manually driven analysis, detection and defeat of such malware. There is a growing recognition that the future cyber defense should involve extensive use of partially autonomous agents that actively patrol the friendly network, and detect and react to hostile activities rapidly (far faster than human reaction time), before the hostile malware is able to inflict major damage, or evade the friendly agents, or destroy the friendly agent. This requires cyber defense agents with a significant degree of intelligence, autonomy, self-learning and adaptability. Autonomy, however, comes with difficult challenges of trust and control by humans. The workshop investigated how the directions of current and future science and technology may impact and define potential breakthroughs in this field. The presentations and discussions at the workshop produced a report as well as proceedings of the workshop detailing the current state of research, projections into the future, with special focus on capabilities, architectures and anticipated technical milestones for achieving strongly intelligent autonomous behaviors of intelligent agents in cyber operations. The workshop brought together approximately 30 cyber security researchers, technologists, and practitioners. The workshop provided an excellent opportunity to increase participants' insight in intelligent autonomous agents in general, and their use in cybersecurity in particular, and to influence the future research in intelligent autonomous agents, especially as it relates to cyber defence and resilience. The workshop comprised a series of topical sessions. Each session included several presentations of papers - some of which were full technical papers and others will be shorter position papers or product papers - and a discussion open to all participants. The Programme Committee utilize the oral discussions at the workshop to formulate the final report of the workshop, including a set of recommendations. The final report is a separate publication not to be confused with these proceedings.
The committee of the workshop included the following members:
CCDCOE Estonia Hervé LE GUYADER Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Cognitique France