Kyla Guru

At 22 years old, Kyla Guru brings to the stage her unique "Tales of a Security Supergirl." On stage, Kyla fuses together her experiences as a first-generation American, her insights from starting two nonprofit organizations, expertise from working as a threat hunter, and her visions for building a secure future for her generation and the next. She shares an unmatched energy with every audience and brings spirited inspiration to everything she does.

After her hometown experienced a cyberattack in which hundreds of social security numbers of local teachers were stolen and exposed, Kyla began studying the science of cyber-insecurity. Soon, she discovered one fact she could not ignore: nearly 90% of cyber issues are caused by human error. Galvanized to meet an unmet need, at 14, Kyla became the Founder and CEO of Bits N’ Bytes Cybersecurity Education (BNBCE). Now, BNBCE is an international 501(c)(3) that creates and distributes curriculum to classrooms and fosters partnerships with school districts, corporations, and educational platforms to empower cybersecurity training and awareness for vulnerable populations. Thus far, BNBCE has partnered with corporations like IBM, Verizon Media, and Facebook, training over 16,000 students internationally and bringing on eight national fellows to spread BNBCE’s mission nationwide.

One year into founding Bits N' Bytes Cybersecurity Education, Kyla recognized the lack of diverse representation within classrooms, conferences, and board rooms, and soon became the co-founder of GirlCon Conference, Chicago’s premiere tech conference that unites 700+ industry professionals and students annually to discuss bridging the gender gap in technology.

Kyla has championed her message of cybersecurity resilience on national and international stages including TEDxChicago, NIST’s NICE Conference, CyberSat, RSAC-USA, and RSAC Singapore 2019, as the youngest speaker to walk across security's largest stage. For her work, Kyla has been honored as Crain Chicago’s Top 50 in Tech, a John F. Kennedy Medal of Honor Recipient, a Global Teen Leader, a Harvard Book Prize Award winner, and has been named as one of the Top 100 Women Fighting Cybercrime.

Kyla is also a student at Stanford University studying Computer Science and International Relations, and has worked in security at Apple, MS-ISAC, CISA, and SpaceX, gaining experience across Threat Intelligence, Offensive Security, Consulting, Trust & Safety, and Artificial Intelligence. At Stanford, she has won national championships in the Collegiate Cyber Defence Competition (CCDC), Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition (CPTC), and the Cyber 9/12 Policy Competition, and just completed her thesis in “Applying LLMs for Nation-State Cyber Attack Attribution” with Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.