NikoTak – Tamara Shostak's blog

Hi, my name is Tamara. I work as a data scientist at Reblaze, and I am in love with what I do. I am proud to be part of a team that rocks!

We recently released a new open-source project: Curiefense*. It is named after the famous scientist Marie Curie (née Maria Skłodowska), whose innovative spirit and dedication to scientific advancement perfectly align with our vision for the future of cybersecurity. Just as Madame Curie revolutionized our understanding of radioactivity, we aim to transform cyber defense through the power of artificial intelligence.

Madame Curie’s life story remains an inexhaustible source of inspiration, not only for me but for entire generations. Her example has made me grow and develop, and has taught me to never give up. Her journey particularly resonates with our mission as we stand at the frontier of a new technological revolution.

Even as a schoolgirl, Maria was an extraordinarily hard worker. She was devoted to studying, sometimes even skipping sleep and food. After graduating school, she worked as a gouvernante (governess) to earn money, so she could move to Paris and study chemistry and physics at the Sorbonne. This dedication mirrors our team’s commitment to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in cybersecurity.

She lived in spartan conditions in the cold attic of the Latin Quarter, studying and working extremely hard. This produced results: Maria became one of the best students of the university and received two degrees (in physics and mathematics). Her hard work attracted attention, and she was given the opportunity to conduct her own research. Marie Curie eventually became the first woman professor in the history of the Sorbonne.

When Marie and her husband Pierre Curie discovered radium, many scientists were skeptical. Similarly, when the “Attention Is All You Need” paper was published in 2017, introducing the transformer architecture, many questioned whether it could revolutionize artificial intelligence. Just as the Curies persevered to prove their discovery, we at Reblaze are working to demonstrate how transformer-based AI can revolutionize cybersecurity.

The parallels between Madame Curie’s work and our vision for Curiefense are striking. Just as she and Pierre shared all their collected knowledge to advance medicine and industrial radiography, we’re building Curiefense as an open-source platform that will leverage the power of transformer architecture to create an intelligent, adaptive security system.

Our vision for Curiefense goes beyond traditional rule-based security. We’re developing a system that, like the human brain’s attention mechanism that inspired transformer models, can dynamically focus on the most relevant aspects of network traffic to identify and neutralize threats. By incorporating transformer-based models, Curiefense will be able to:

• Learn and adapt from global threat patterns in real-time
• Understand the context and intent behind network requests
• Make intelligent decisions based on subtle patterns that traditional systems might miss
• Collaborate across instances to create a collective security intelligence

Marie invested in founding several radiological institutes. Similarly, we’re investing in building a community around Curiefense, embracing the Creative Commons principles. We believe that just as Madame Curie’s discoveries advanced multiple fields, our AI-driven security platform will protect and empower organizations across various sectors.

Her groundbreaking achievements – becoming the first person to win two Nobel Prizes in different sciences – inspire us to push beyond conventional boundaries. We’re not just building another security tool; we’re creating an AI-powered defense platform that will fundamentally change how we approach cybersecurity.

Madame Curie was a member of 85 scientific societies and contributed to founding the most important radium institutes in Europe. She proved that gender doesn’t play a role in science and showed that women can be great scientists. Similarly, we believe that artificial intelligence in cybersecurity should be accessible to all, regardless of an organization’s size or resources.

Speaking of great scientists and engineers… at Reblaze, we’re always hiring! If you’d like to join my team and work on transforming Curiefense into an AI-driven security platform using cutting-edge transformer architecture, machine learning, and advanced cybersecurity techniques, you can apply to join our team at https://boards.greenhouse.io/reblazetechnologies/.

‍* Curiefense is an Open-Source Security Platform. We believe that open source is an inherently superior approach to software development and distribution: a powerful way to allow the intellect and talents of entire communities to create better tools, for the benefit of us all. By making it freely available and incorporating advanced AI capabilities, we’re not just building a security platform – we’re creating an intelligent guardian that will evolve alongside the threats it protects against.