Ryan Heartfield

Ryan is CTO / Chief Scientist and co-founder of Exalens, a cybersecurity startup enhancing the operational resilience of digital transforming industries like manufacturing. At Exalens, Ryan leads capability development, cybersecurity research, and platform innovation across Exalens’ cyber-physical threat detection and incident response technologies. He is an expert in AI/ML for cybersecurity threat detection and response, security operations automation and response (SOAR), network security architecture, and enterprise security strategy. He is also a Research Fellow in cybersecurity in the IoT and Security (ISEC) research group at the University of Greenwich, UK, where he has published over 20 articles in top cybersecurity journals, and leads research and development in multiple national and international research projects, focusing on artificial intelligence in cybersecurity, cyber-physical intrusion detection, information verification, and social engineering. His research in defining the human-as-a-security-sensor paradigm and Cyber-Physical Detection and Response (CPDR) have gained both academic and industrial recognition.