CIO Influence Interview with Hao Yang, VP and Head of AI at Splunk

Dr. Hao Yang has been at the forefront of AI innovation as the Vice President and Head of AI at Splunk. He leads the development and implementation of cutting-edge AI and machine learning technologies that enhance Splunk’s products and services. 

Hi Dr. Yang, please tell us about your current role at Splunk.

As VP and Head of AI at Splunk, I lead the development and integration of AI and ML technologies to enhance our platform. My team and I focus on creating innovative, AI-driven solutions that help our customers gain deeper insights, improve operational efficiency and drive better business outcomes.

How are Splunk’s AI-driven features, especially in connection to security and observability unique?

We’re taking a thoughtful and deliberate approach to incorporating AI into our products. Our focus is customer-centric – we want to speed up routine tasks and enhance the ability to get insights from data quickly. For instance, with our AI Assistants, customers can use natural language to create Splunk Search Processing Language (SPL) queries and bridge the gap between machine-driven analytics and human intuition. Splunk’s AI Assistant in Observability Cloud and AI Assistant in Enterprise Security streamline the detection and investigative process for IT Operations teams and security analysts while improving workflows. For customers, the ability to have quick insights while mitigating traditional pitfalls glean tangible cost and time-saving benefits.

What major difficulties do organizations have in integrating AI into their security frameworks, and how is Splunk addressing these challenges?

We know that organizations are facing an increasing number of challenges due to the rapid evolution of technology and the increasing complexity of IT environments. The complexity of these systems often makes it challenging to detect and respond to incidents quickly.

Splunk is addressing these challenges by enhancing digital resilience through the use of AI. Our AI-driven solutions help organizations detect threats more effectively by connecting the dots to quickly identify the root causes of incidents. This rapid detection capability is crucial for organizations when preventing infrastructure, security, and application issues from becoming major incidents in high-stakes situations. By leveraging AI, Splunk enables faster problem mitigation and threat neutralization, helping organizations keep their environments secure and running smoothly.

Also Read: How Machine Learning is Transforming Threat Detection

According to Statista’s report, the market for AI technologies is vast. It will amount to around 200 billion U.S. dollars in 2023 and is expected to grow well beyond that to over 1.8 trillion U.S. dollars by 2030. What strategic initiatives must companies implement to capitalize on this rapid growth and stay competitive in such an evolving industry?

One top initiative will be to educate employees on AI. To maintain a competitive edge, it’s highly necessary to develop an internal AI training program and foster a culture of continuous learning around AI integrations. All employees – not just on the tech side of an organization – will need to be educated and understand how to appropriately use AI technologies to their advantage while responsibly understanding best practices. Cross-collaboration from the C-suite (such as a company’s CTO, CISO, and HR teams) will be necessary to create this AI education program because it will boost individual technology skills, data security across sectors, and IT intelligence across an organization in its entirety.

Tell us about some of your latest AI innovations at Splunk.

We’ve recently introduced a collection of AI tools that leverage Splunk’s “human-in-the-loop” approach, helping every user to become a security and observability expert. We recently announced three Splunk AI Assistants powered by generative AI. These new innovations will amplify your expertise, and help optimize and protect your digital systems.

Splunk AI Assistant for SPL is now generally available, unleashing the power of Splunk’s platform for everyone in your organization. It allows you to write SPL queries using natural language, explain SPL queries if you were handing someone’s dashboard, and answer product how-to questions directly in the app.

Our AI Assistant in Observability Cloud is now in preview. From a simple prompt of, “Tell me what’s wrong,” the AI Assistant can analyze across logs, traces and metrics, summarize related incidents, help you find out the root cause across the entire stack, and recommend steps to solve the problem.

Finally, our AI Assistant in Security is coming to Splunk Enterprise Security, available in preview later this year. Security analysts will be able to start their investigation with a summary of security findings and related context, and use the AI Assistant to help write SPL queries, get deeper insights and recommend next steps. When finished with an investigation, it can generate an incident report, so the analysts can quickly close out the investigation.

Looking ahead to 2025, what specific emerging AI technologies do you believe companies must adopt to remain competitive and continue growing?

To truly succeed with AI, you need three things. First, having access to vast amounts of data is crucial, as it serves as the fuel for AI advancements. Customers of Cisco and Splunk benefit in this respect, having unparalleled access to all the data they need as the two organizations continue to come together.

Second, domain expertise plays a pivotal role in successfully leveraging AI to solve business challenges. And with Splunk being a leader in security and observability for decades, we’re taking that domain expertise to advance the adoption of AI innovations. Finally, data security and privacy measures are paramount for the safe and responsible deployment of AI. Splunk is a trusted platform to keep your mission-critical data safe and secure.

These foundational elements collectively distinguish Splunk AI as unique and indispensable, as our customers seek to embrace the transformative potential of AI.

Also Read: AI in Cybersecurity a Threat or Not?

What advice would you give to young professionals who aspire to work in AI and data science, especially in the context of security and observability?

My advice for young professionals in AI and data science fields is to be optimistic about the ongoing advancements we see come to fruition today. Although this is an exciting time in the technology industry, it’s also important to be cautious of the risks that come along with it, especially when implementing AI tools into security and observability processes. AI can’t solve all problems and there will always be risks when using the tech. As the popularity behind AI continues to grow, young IT professionals need to put security training into practice, as well as build skills to boost retention in this evolving industry.

As you look forward to the next five years, what is your long-term vision for AI at Splunk, and how do you see it impacting the broader tech landscape?

It is hard to predict where AI will be headed in five years as we don’t necessarily know what the next phase of the technology looks like. While AI is a tool that can be helpful it requires oversight from humans. Splunk’s goal is to predict things going wrong before they do and our AI powered solutions will work to identify the cause of incidents for years on end. Splunk’s solutions will impact the broader tech landscape by accelerating risk mitigation and helping enterprises globally maintain safe and secure environments.

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