Autonomous Cyber Defense

Follow this topic Ask about this topic

Autonomous cyber defense studies how systems can monitor networks and devices, recognize attacks, and choose responses such as blocking access, patching, deception, or recovery. Common approaches include reinforcement learning and partially observable decision models, graph-based attack analysis, coordinated agents, and language-model planners connected to security tools. Researchers test these methods in simulated networks, cyber ranges, and emulated enterprise, industrial, and IoT settings, measuring not only detection but also containment, response time, and service disruption. A central challenge is making policies reliable against adaptive attackers and unfamiliar environments while ensuring actions stay within safety and operational limits.

Latest papers

72 papers10 papers in the last four weeks, up 43% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

JANUS: Synthesizing Cross-Layer Defenses Against Web Deserialization Attacks
Oct 26, 2026Ruozhao Yang, Minglang Li, Jiongchi Yu +2Autonomous Cyber Defense
Singapore Management University, Singapore · UESTC, China · Nanyang Technological University, Singapore +1
AIRO: A Streaming-Based Machine Learning Framework for Threat Detection and Security in Industrial Internet of Things
Oct 22, 2026Raima Deb, Pranav M Pawar, Mithun Mukherjee +2IoT Intrusion Detection Autonomous Cyber Defense
∗Department of Computer Science, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Dubai Campus, Dubai International Academic City, Dubai, United Arab Emirates · † Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University, Guangzhou, China
Implementation of Dynamic Microsegmentation for a Multi-Robot Network
Oct 21, 2026Vishwam Raval, Jaewon Kim, Ravi Pattabhi +1Internet of Things Autonomous Cyber Defense
Global Cyber Research Institute Texas A&M University College Station, USA · ColorTokens Inc San Jose, CA
CyberArena: Benchmarking AI Agents in Live Symmetric Attack-and-Defense Combat
Oct 13, 2026Bangya Liu, Jianhong Tu, Yueyang Pan +19AI Agent Security Benchmarks Cybersecurity
2077AI Open Source Foundation · University of Wisconsin–Madison · UC Santa Cruz +8
Autonomous Cyber Operations Gym for Training and Evaluating AI Models for Defence
Oct 13, 2026Tobias Hürten, Johannes F. Loevenich, Florian Spelter +5Cybersecurity Autonomous Cyber Defense
CortAIx Labs, Thales Deutschland, Ditzingen, Germany · Department of Mathematics/Computer Science, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany · Department of Informatics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany +1
Game-Theoretic Reinforcement Learning based Topology-Agnostic Defense for Virtual Power Plants
Oct 10, 2026Pooja Algikar, Stefano Fenu, Kumarsinh Jhala +1Game-Theoretic RL Cybersecurity
the energy systems and infrastructure assessment division at Argonne National Laboratory
Ask the Expert: LLM-Guided Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Cyber Defense
Oct 7, 2026Fernando Martinez, Abhishek Satyam, Tao Li +3Autonomous Cyber Defense LLM-Guided RL
Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Fordham University, New York, USA · Department of Systems Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey, USA
Bounded Reasoning: Cognitive Hierarchy in Human-versus-AI Cyber Defense
Oct 4, 2026Zahra Aref, Sheng Wei, Narayan B. MandayamProspect Theory Human-AI Decision Making
Rutgers University
AgentTrap: Stateful Feedback Deception against Autonomous Penetration Testing Agents
Oct 2, 2026Yuelin Wang, Jiongchi Yu, Yanbang SunCybersecurity AI Agent Security
Tianjin University Tianjin, China · Nanyang Technological University Singapore
From Network Intrusion Detection to Blockchain-Backed Endpoint Detection and Response: Mapping the Landscape of Decentralized Detection-and-Response Architectures
Oct 1, 2026Yahya Shahsavari, Sara Rouhani, Kaiwen ZhangAutonomous Cyber Defense IoT Intrusion Detection
Dept. of Software and IT Engineering ´Ecole de technologie sup´erieure ( ´ETS) Montr´eal, Qu´ebec, Canada · Dept. of Computer Science University of Calgary Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Towards Hierarchical Cyber Defense with Large Language Models: From Planning to Execution
Sep 30, 2026Harshith Doppalapudi, Nathaniel D. Bastian, Ankit ShahAutonomous Cyber Defense Language Model-Based Control
Indiana University Bloomington, IN, USA · Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD, USA
CyberWorld: World Models for Sample-Efficient Autonomous Cyber Defense
Sep 25, 2026Ryozo Masukawa, Sanggeon Yun, Raheeb Hassan +3Autonomous Cyber Defense Model-Based RL
University of California, Irvine
Hard Stop: Kernel-Level Preemption and Containment for Rogue Agentic Execution
Sep 24, 2026José Luis PinoAutonomous Cyber Defense AI Agent Security
Independent Researcher Westlake Village, CA, USA
Autonomy in Check: Governor-Mediated Adaptive Security at the Edge
Sep 16, 2026Ijaz Ahmad, Ijaz Ahmad, Flavio Esposito +1Autonomous Cyber Defense AI Agent Security
Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland · VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Espoo, Finland · Department of Computer Science, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
RobResilience: Implementing and Evaluating a Resilience Framework for Cyber-Physical Embodied Systems
Sep 15, 2026Gysella Imrell, Emanuele Miotto, Mahya Mohammadi Kashani +2Cyber-Physical Systems Autonomous Cyber Defense
Örebro University Örebro, Sweden · University of Padua Padua, Italy
The MAL Simulator: Cyber Operations Simulation based on Attack & Defense Graphs
Sep 15, 2026Jakob Nyberg, Sandor Berglund, Andrei Buhaiu +3Cybersecurity Autonomous Cyber Defense
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
A Cyber Range Evaluation of Autonomous Network Incident Response Agents
Sep 15, 2026Jakob Nyberg, Teodor Sommestad, Andrei Buhaiu +3Autonomous Cyber Defense AI Agent Evaluation
Department of Network and Systems Engineering at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden · KTH
Learning Intrusion Response Strategies for OT Systems
Sep 9, 2026Duc Huy Le, Rolf StadlerAutonomous Cyber Defense Cybersecurity
Dept. of Network and Systems Engineering KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Autonomous Cyber Defense: Real-Time Attack Detection and Mitigation in Software-Defined Networks Using Machine Learning
Aug 22, 2026Alexandre Amaral, Fernando Moro, Ana MalheiroAutonomous Cyber Defense Cybersecurity
Department of Informatics Instituto Federal Catarinense Camboriú, Brazil · Department of Mathematics Instituto Federal Catarinense Camboriú, Brazil
Autonomous Cyber Defense in Connected Vehicles: A Multi-Agent Approach to V2X Security
Aug 19, 2026Krishna Teja MedamAutonomous Cyber Defense V2X Communication
Dept. of Electrical Engineering & Computer Engineering, and Computer Science University of Detroit Mercy Detroit, MI, USA
SysEvolve: An AI-native, safe, autonomous adversarial attack-defense co-evolutionary system
Aug 15, 2026Yuhan Meng, Shaofei Li, Jionghao Huang +8Cybersecurity Autonomous Cyber Defense
School of Computer Science, Peking University · Southeast University · School of Computing, National University of Singapore
Machine Learning-Based Cyber Defense for Cloud Infrastructure: An Adaptive Deep Q-Network Architecture for Intelligent Intrusion Detection and Automated Threat Mitigation
Aug 12, 2026Md Yassir Mottalib, Md Yousuf, Eklachur Rahman Bhuiyan +5Autonomous Cyber Defense Deep Q-Learning
Master of Science in Information System Technology, Wilmington University, USA · Master's of Science in Data Analytics, College of Sciences and Technology, University of Houston- Downtown, USA · Master of Science in Information Technology, Washington University of Science and Technology, USA +4
STAIR: Effective Incident Response Using an End-to-End Agentic Planning Framework
Aug 10, 2026Hanlin Jiang, Jionghao Huang, Shaofei Li +6Autonomous Cyber Defense LLM Agent Orchestration
Key Laboratory of High Confidence Software Technologies, Peking University, Ministry of Education · Southeast University · Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
Trident : How to Break Deep Reinforcement Learning Cyber Defenses (Agentic)
Aug 5, 2026Ryozo Masukawa, Ian Bryant, Armita Kazeminajafabadi +6Autonomous Cyber Defense LLM Red Teaming
University of California, Irvine · Northeastern University · Johns Hopkins University
Distilling Knowledge from Large Language Models into Lightweight Reinforcement Learning Agents for Autonomous Cyber Operations
Jul 30, 2026Konur Tholl, François Rivest, Mariam El Mezouar +2Autonomous Cyber Defense LLM-Guided RL
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Canada · Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Canada · Defence Research and Development Canada, Ottawa, Canada +1
AgentSnare: Learning to Delay, Divert, and Defuse Autonomous Penetration Agents
Jul 29, 2026Ruoyu Wang, Heng Zhao, Renjie Wu +4Autonomous Cyber Defense Cybersecurity
The State Key Laboratory of Blockchain and Data Security, Zhejiang University · 3Hainan University · 4Anhui University +1
Agentic Cloud Decoys: A Deception-Driven Framework for Autonomous Intrusion Investigation
Jul 27, 2026Mohan Manivannan, Dalal AlharthiAutonomous Cyber Defense Cybersecurity
College of Information Science University of Arizona Tucson, AZ, USA
Practical Graph Optimisation and AI-Driven Models for Active Directory Security Hardening
Jul 24, 2026Huy Q. NgoAutonomous Cyber Defense Cybersecurity
School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, The University of Adelaide
Closing the Loop: An Access-Control Architecture for Automated, Anomaly-Driven Network Revocation in IoT Deployments
Jul 13, 2026Muhammet Emir Korkmaz, Kemal Bicakci, Yusuf UzunayAutonomous Cyber Defense IoT Intrusion Detection
Securify Information Technology and Security Training Consulting Inc., 06378, Ankara, TÜRK˙IYE · Informatics Institute, Istanbul Technical University, Ayazaga Campus, 34467, Maslak, Istanbul, TÜRK˙IYE
COHORT: Collaborative Orchestration for Hardening via Offensive Replay on Emulated Topologies
Jun 29, 2026Chen Frydman, Aviram Zilberman, Rubin Krief +6Autonomous Cyber Defense Cybersecurity
Ben-Gurion University of The Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel · Jerusalem College of Technology, Jerusalem, Israel · Fujitsu

Oct 26, 2026J/K move · Enter open · S save

JANUS: Synthesizing Cross-Layer Defenses Against Web Deserialization Attacks

Ruozhao Yang, Minglang Li, Jiongchi Yu, Xinfeng Li+1

Singapore Management University, Singapore · UESTC, China · Nanyang Technological University, Singapore+1

Autonomous Cyber Defense

Open paper AskPDF arXiv

Unsafe deserialization turns untrusted data into attacker-controlled execution, and a single vulnerability can admit diverse exploit variants that evade defenses tailored to a known exploit. Existing defenses typically operate at a single enforcement point with limited visibility into the full attack. Combining controls across layers offers complementary protection, but coordinating them to preserve legitimate functionality and adapting them to new variants requires substantial expert effort. We propose JANUS, a red-blue adversarial framework for automated cross-layer defense synthesis. Starting from a known exploit, \sys iteratively refines deployment-specific policies in an isolated offline environment. A black-box attacker probes the current policy for exploit variants using only externally observable feedback. The defender summarizes each verified variant into its security-relevant effects, uses counterfactual replay to separate complementary coverage from redundant enforcement, and jointly selects and scopes controls across layers. Each candidate policy is validated against accumulated exploits and benign workflows. We evaluate JANUS on sixteen vulnerability deployments across six Java and PHP applications against gateway, application, system, and cross-layer defenses. JANUS reduces held-out attack success to 6.2%, compared with 18.8-55.0% for the baselines, fully mitigates 13 of 16 deployments, and preserves 98.4% of benign functionality tests at a 6.9% targeted P95 latency increase.