With his projects, Sunil Kumar Puli is going far root in progress of cybersecurity. He’s moving from compliance checklists to proactive, preventative frameworks that avoid expensive repeat regulatory disasters. While his innovative approaches have helped build operational trust, they have gone on to save millions of users around the world. Puli focuses on automation and artificial intelligence. Since then, it’s grown into an award-winning leader of compliance automation, working alongside enterprises in industries ranging from financial services to cloud infrastructure.
Puli’s career is a testament to the potent combination of innovation, tangible results, and worldwide accessibility. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society. He received the Global Leadership Award for Innovation in Technology, establishing a new standard for resilience in cyber-security.
Innovations in Automated Hardening
At the core of Puli’s work are four fundamental innovations that redefine system hardening: Automated Hardening, AI-driven compliance frameworks, continuous monitoring, and real-time incident response. His approach is to marshal against easily established criteria like NIST and CIS benchmarks by turning them into logical hardening measures with Autonomous Hardening. This new approach is designed to move compliance from a reactive position to a proactive one.
By automating many of the hardening processes, organizations have seen drastic improvements in their security postures. For example, they’ve reduced incident response times by 35%—making organizations more resilient than ever before.
“The traditional model is broken. The audit cycle does not cover all potential vulnerabilities that exist in the system. Regulators no longer accept basic compliance as the minimum threshold.”
Puli’s frameworks have delivered outstanding outcomes, increasing audit pass rates to more than 95%. This performance is in stark contrast to the industry average, which is around 70%. That’s an astounding decrease that demonstrates how successful his taste for hands-on AI approaches have been.
The growing necessity for innovation in cybersecurity has been further highlighted in recent months, particularly after notable regulatory penalties in the space. In 2020, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) fined Capital One $80 million for cloud risk management failures and delayed remediation. Likewise, Citibank recently incurred a mind-boggling $400 million penalty for not doing enough remediation work. These examples illustrate the real-world impacts of failing to comply with required regulations.
Addressing Regulatory Challenges
Puli’s approach to these challenges through AI-powered hardening methods goes straight to the failure modes that regulators rack up penalties. He emphasizes the urgency of this approach:
Puli is on a mission to make automation the foundation of every organization. It’s the only way to stay in compliance and improve your security posture.
“AI-driven hardening directly addresses the failure modes regulators penalize. The goal is resilience—preventing the next major headline.”
Shifting focus
Past regulatory compliance, Puli’s innovations laid the groundwork for substantial operational efficiencies. His frameworks have reduced operational costs by 30%. This allows organizations to accomplish more with their limited resources and better improve their overall cybersecurity posture.
“Automation is no longer optional—it’s the only way forward,” he asserts.
The Impact on Operational Efficiency
With system drift happening on a daily basis and attackers ever-evolving, Puli emphasizes the importance of constant watchfulness.
Through the inclusion of continuous monitoring and real-time response, Puli has built frameworks that help organizations be proactive, not reactive to threats as they arise.
“System drift happens daily, and attackers don’t wait for quarterly audits.”
By integrating continuous monitoring and real-time adjustments into his frameworks, Puli ensures organizations remain resilient against emerging threats.
