William Welch, Sysdig's newly appointed CEO, takes first step to strengthen his leadership team by hiring CISO and promoting Shanta Kohli to lead marketing strategy as CMO amid global expansion

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sysdig, the leader in real-time cloud security, today announced the appointments of Sergej Epp as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and Shanta Kohli as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) under the direction of CEO William "Bill" Welch, who joined the company last month. Together, Kohli and Epp bring nearly four decades of cybersecurity experience and a track record of success in the cybersecurity industry across organizations including Palo Alto Networks, Kiteworks, and Blue Coat Systems (a company acquired by Symantec).

According to International Data Corp (IDC), global spend on public cloud services is projected to reach $805 billion by the end of 2024 and double over the next four years. As some organizations begin to build their companies in the cloud and others strategically move applications to cloud-native workloads, understanding the complexity of the cloud security landscape and the necessary speed is crucial. As an open source-based company engrained in a community approach to security, educating the industry about cloud security trends and best practices has been a priority at Sysdig.

"Sysdig has reached a pivotal point in its journey. Our vision for the future hinges on building a team of exceptional leaders who can deliver transformational outcomes for our customers and partners in this fast-paced market," Welch said. "With so much education still needed when it comes to cloud security, the combined strength of Sergej's cybersecurity acumen and Shanta's marketing prowess will help us educate modern organizations and amplify our ability to protect businesses globally without compromising their speed of innovation or agility."

Sergej Epp Joins as CISO to Enhance Global Cloud Security Operations

In his role as CISO, Epp will lead cybersecurity strategy, operations, and risk management initiatives at Sysdig. Epp has had a distinguished career that includes more than a decade in various cybersecurity leadership roles at Deutsche Bank, where he was responsible for leading all cyberdefense centers across the Americas, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific, as well as digital forensics, investigations, and cyberhygiene teams. He joins Sysdig most recently from Palo Alto Networks, where he contributed to securing global organizations and building threat intelligence partnerships.

Epp, who was recently named one of Capital Magazine's "40 Under 40," regularly speaks at international conferences, is an external management board trainer to Fortune Global 500 firms, and has served in advisory roles for government entities such as the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), venture capital firms, and high-tech startups.

"With cloud adoption and AI-based attacks accelerating, organizations need security that moves at developer speed. Sysdig, creator of the world's most widely adopted open source cloud-native threat detection tool – Falco – positions organizations perfectly to meet this challenge," Epp said. "It's prime time for runtime security as organizations realize that posture and hygiene controls alone are too slow. I look forward to bringing the urgency of real-time threat detection and response to cloud and container adoption."

Shanta Kohli Promoted to CMO to Lead Strategy Amid Global Expansion

With her promotion to CMO, Kohli will unify global marketing efforts to accelerate growth. Kohli, a cybersecurity veteran, has a track record of scaling awareness and demand to boost momentum across high-growth startups and industry giants, including Nimble Storage (a company acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise for over $1 billion) and Blue Coat Systems. During her tenure in leadership at Palo Alto Networks, Kohli designed, executed, and directed campaigns, demand generation, content creation, and customer marketing initiatives to enhance growth throughout the portfolio.

Kohli joined Sysdig in 2020 to build the company's global growth marketing engine, where she connected marketing and sales to build a strong pipeline of opportunities. During her tenure, Kohli's role has continually expanded and under her leadership, the company's Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) nearly tripled. As CMO, Kohli's breadth of marketing experience and customer focus will further position Sysdig as a critical partner for organizations navigating the dynamic cloud-native landscape.

"Cloud security is at a pivotal moment," Kohli said. "Organizations across the board realize the need for cloud security, but there are companies that think they can extend their legacy security solutions; others believe focusing on hygiene alone is enough. We have a lot of educating to do. Between our elite Sysdig Threat Research Team, our revolutionary AI with Sysdig Sage, and setting the industry's first cloud detection benchmark, Sysdig is leading the charge in educating the market on what cloud threats look like, and how to move faster than them."

Expanding Sysdig's Leadership in Cloud Security

Sysdig's cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) has gained rapid market traction. Powered by open source Falco, the standard for cloud runtime threat detection, and Sysdig Sage, the first AI cloud security analyst capable of multi-step reasoning and contextual awareness, Sysdig is setting the pace of human detection and response. In a world where cloud attacks unfold in less than 10 minutes, seconds matter. Sysdig offers end-to-end cloud security with the fastest cloud threat detection, along with vulnerability prioritization and cloud identity insights to help security teams outpace increasingly sophisticated attackers.

Sysdig has been at the forefront of market education, successfully integrating its Kraken Discovery Lab training sessions into the International Information System Security Certification Consortium (ISC2), the world's premier cybersecurity professional association. These sessions now count toward earning continuing professional education (CPE) credits. Last month, MITRE added LLMjacking, the theft of large language model (LLM) access first identified by the Sysdig Threat Research Team (TRT), to its ATT&CK framework. In addition to LLMjacking, the Sysdig TRT has made over a dozen recent groundbreaking AI and cloud attack discoveries. Last year, Sysdig also worked with industry analysts, customers, and partners to set the industry's first cloud detection and response benchmark.

Resources

• Read the Sysdig TRT's "2024 Global Threat Year-in-Review."
• Learn more about Sysdig Sage, the first AI cloud security analyst.
• Explore Sysdig's cloud and container security content hub, "Learn Cloud Native."

About Sysdig

In the cloud, every second counts. Attacks unfold in minutes and security teams must protect the business without slowing it down. Sysdig, the leader and outperformer in the "2024 GigaOm Radar for Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPPs)," stops cloud attacks in seconds and instantly detects changes in risk with real-time insights and open source Falco. Sysdig Sage, the industry's first AI cloud security analyst, uplevels human response and enables security, developers, and DevOps to work together, faster. By correlating signals across cloud workloads, identities, and services, Sysdig uncovers hidden attack paths and prioritizes real risk. From prevention to defense, Sysdig helps enterprises focus on what matters: innovation.

Sysdig. Secure Every Second.

Media Contact
Damon Weinhold
damon.weinhold@sysdig.com
+1 (415) 873-4772