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Popular methods in cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with partially observable environments typically allow agents to act independently during execution, which may limit the coordinated effect of the trained policies. However,…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2025-07-22 Faizan Contractor , Li Li , Ranwa Al Mallah

Reinforcement Learning (RL) and Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) have emerged as promising methodologies for addressing challenges in automated cyber defence (ACD). These techniques offer adaptive decision-making capabilities in…

Autonomous Cyber Defence is required to respond to high-tempo cyber-attacks. To facilitate the research in this challenging area, we explore the utility of the autonomous cyber operation environments presented as part of the Cyber Autonomy…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-09-15 Mitchell Kiely , David Bowman , Maxwell Standen , Christopher Moir

Continual Learning (CL) is a powerful tool that enables agents to learn a sequence of tasks, accumulating knowledge learned in the past and using it for problem-solving or future task learning. However, existing CL methods often assume that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-09 Chaofan Pan , Jiafen Liu , Yanhua Li , Linbo Xiong , Fan Min , Wei Wei , Xin Yang

Recent advances in deep reinforcement learning for autonomous cyber defence have resulted in agents that can successfully defend simulated computer networks against cyber-attacks. However, many of these agents would need retraining to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-08 Tim Dudman , Martyn Bull

There is a growing need for cybersecurity professionals with practical knowledge and experience to meet societal needs and comply with new standards and regulations. At the same time, the advances in software technology and artificial…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Charilaos Skandylas , Mikael Asplund

The rapid increase in the number of cyber-attacks in recent years raises the need for principled methods for defending networks against malicious actors. Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has emerged as a promising approach for mitigating…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-30 Gregory Palmer , Chris Parry , Daniel J. B. Harrold , Chris Willis

The emulation of multi-step attacks attributed to advanced persistent threats is valuable for training defenders and evaluating defense tools. In this paper, we discuss the numerous challenges and desired attributes associated with such…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-10-09 Suresh K. Damodaran , Paul D. Rowe

Recently, reinforcement and deep reinforcement learning (RL/DRL) have been applied to develop autonomous agents for cyber network operations(CyOps), where the agents are trained in a representative environment using RL and particularly DRL…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-09-12 Li Li , Jean-Pierre S. El Rami , Ryan Kerr , Adrian Taylor , Grant Vandenberghe

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) is emerging as a viable strategy for automated cyber defense (ACD). The traditional RL approach represents networks as a list of computers in various states of safety or threat. Unfortunately, these models…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-22 Isaiah J. King , Benjamin Bowman , H. Howie Huang

Reinforcement learning (RL) has been demonstrated suitable to develop agents that play complex games with human-level performance. However, it is not understood how to effectively use RL to perform cybersecurity tasks. To develop such…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-03-16 Andres Molina-Markham , Cory Miniter , Becky Powell , Ahmad Ridley

Actor-action semantic segmentation made an important step toward advanced video understanding problems: what action is happening; who is performing the action; and where is the action in space-time. Current models for this problem are…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2015-12-31 Chenliang Xu , Jason J. Corso

The recent rise in increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks raises the need for robust and resilient autonomous cyber-defence (ACD) agents. Given the variety of cyber-attack tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) employed, learning…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-02-03 Gregory Palmer , Luke Swaby , Daniel J. B. Harrold , Matthew Stewart , Alex Hiles , Chris Willis , Ian Miles , Sara Farmer

The lack of guided exercises and practical opportunities to learn about cybersecurity in a practical way makes it difficult for security experts to improve their proficiency. Capture the Flag events and Cyber Ranges are ideal for…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-01-15 Marcus Knüpfer , Tore Bierwirth , Lars Stiemert , Matthias Schopp , Sebastian Seeber , Daniela Pöhn , Peter Hillmann

The need for autonomous and adaptive defense mechanisms has become paramount in the rapidly evolving landscape of cyber threats. Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning (MADRL) presents a promising approach to enhancing the efficacy and…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-03-31 Mingjun Wang , Remington Dechene

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has shown great potential for autonomous decision-making in the cybersecurity domain, enabling agents to learn through direct environment interaction. However, RL agents in Autonomous Cyber Operations (ACO)…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-02-17 Konur Tholl , François Rivest , Mariam El Mezouar , Adrian Taylor , Ranwa Al Mallah

Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents are increasingly used to simulate sophisticated cyberattacks, but their decision-making processes remain opaque, hindering trust, debugging, and defensive preparedness. In high-stakes cybersecurity…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-05-18 Diksha Goel , Kristen Moore , Jeff Wang , Minjune Kim , Thanh Thi Nguyen

A significant challenge for autonomous cyber defence is ensuring a defensive agent's ability to generalise across diverse network topologies and configurations. This capability is necessary for agents to remain effective when deployed in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-27 Isaac Symes Thompson , Alberto Caron , Chris Hicks , Vasilios Mavroudis

Cybersecurity incident response teams mitigate the impact of adverse cyber-related events in organisations. Field studies of IR teams suggest that at present the process of IR is under-developed with a focus on the technological dimension…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-08-12 Ashley O'Neill , Atif Ahmad , Sean Maynard

Rooted in collaborative efforts, cybersecurity spans the scope of cyber competitions and warfare. Despite extensive research into team strategy in sports and project management, empirical study in cyber-security is minimal. This gap…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-07-21 Tristan J. Calay , Basheer Qolomany , Aos Mulahuwaish , Liaquat Hossain , Jacques Bou Abdo