Rapid7 partners with Queens University Belfast for cloud security

Rapid7, a provider of extended risk and threat detection, has declared the initiation of a new security research collaboration with the Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) at Queens University Belfast (QUB). This new partnership, hosted within CSIT’s Cyber-AI Hub, aims to bring advancements in cloud security.

Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced machine learning (ML) capabilities, the collaboration will focus on risk and active threat detection within cloud environments. The initial research area will be identifying potential information exposure. As per a report by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), such advancements have become crucial as cybercriminals, even with minimal sophistication, are likely to enhance their services access abilities using AI technology, including to cloud services noted for their complexity.

Raj Samani, senior vice president and chief scientist at Rapid7, points out the opportune timing of this partnership. "This security research partnership comes at a time when there is still a defender advantage surrounding AI," he noted, adding that it's critical to expedite the discovery and delivery of security advancements to businesses and society "before the window closes".

This partnership is not the first instance of a combined endeavour between Rapid7 and CSIT. The two entities have had a longstanding project-based relationship since 2022 and have been recognised with several awards for their innovative AI research in application security.

The collaboration, according to Dr. Paul Miller, Cyber-AI Hub Director, CSIT – a staunch advocate of the partnership - will lead to improved cybersecurity outcomes by applying CSIT’s academic and engineering expertise to industry-defined challenges. "The Cyber-AI Hub brings CSIT’s academic and engineering expertise to industry-defined challenges to collaboratively advance research and discovery for improved cybersecurity outcomes," said Dr. Miller. He also mentioned that the initiative aligns with the vision of maintaining Northern Ireland’s global leadership in cybersecurity technology.

The partnership will enable Rapid7 to assist CSIT in comprehending the data available in cloud environments, and the emerging attacker techniques and motivations that are driving the pursuit of cloud data. The collaboration aims to merge the vast AI and industry expertise of Rapid7’s R&D team with leading AI research approaches from CSIT, without any usage or sharing of customer data at any stage.

At present, Rapid7's platform uses AI-driven anomalous activity detection across multi-cloud and hybrid environments, enabling security teams to quickly and accurately classify and prioritise threats and in turn, improving visibility and response times. The partnership's continued research into cloud-based detections reinforces Rapid7’s commitment to helping organisations take command of their attack surfaces.