E554: 'Fighting Cyber Threats with AI' with Dune Security's Kyle Ryan

Today's guest is Kyle Ryan, Senior Engineering Manager and Principal Engineer at Dune Security. Founded in 2023, Dune Security’s User Adaptive Risk Management solution automatically prevents insider threats in real time. With 90% of breaches starting from human error, traditional phishing simulations and compliance training often fail to reduce real-world risk. Dune addresses this with a unified platform that continuously monitors behavior, tailors interventions and adapts protections around high-risk users.

Kyle is highly skilled in AI & Machine Learning research and development, with a specialization in building secure, robust and scalable systems for cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions. He is currently developing advanced technologies to prevent AI-powered social engineering attacks and enable real-time, dynamic risk profiling of employees. Kyle believes that as threat actors evolve, organizations must adapt using data-driven methods to reduce the attack surface and strengthen defenses.

In this episode, Kyle talks about:

0:00 His journey from early chatbot work to founding engineer at Dune

2:19 How Dune Security simulates advanced phishing attacks to train users

4:45 How his role evolved from generalist to AI R&D

8:17 Delivering authentic threat simulations and risk visibility for organizations

11:20 Why future threats will be hyper-personalised, cross-channel and AI-driven

14:58 His key advice to stay on AI’s cutting edge and solve hard problemsTo find out more about all the great work happening at Dune Security, check out the website www.dune.security