In this RedMonk Quick Take, Kate Holterhoff chats with Samir Sherif, Global Field CISO at Fastly, about Fastly Xcelerate NY. They discuss the event’s planned customer stories, and Samir shares insights on security challenges, AI integration, and what attendees can expect.
This episode is sponsored by Fastly.
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Transcript
Kate Holterhoff (00:02)
Greetings. I’m Kate Holterhoff, senior analyst at RedMonk, and my guest today is Samir Sherif. He’s the global field CISO at Fastly. Samir, thanks so much for joining me today to chat about Fastly Xcelerate.
Samir Sherif (00:15)
Thank you, thank you for having me.
Kate Holterhoff (00:17)
All right, so we here at RedMonk are getting super jazzed to attend Fastly Xcelerate New York. I will be there in person. it’s gonna be my first time at any Fastly Xcelerate. I know you do these you know, across the world. So I I in particular am looking forward to this. But I gotta ask you, Samir, how are you feeling about this? Are you ready?
Samir Sherif (00:40)
I I’ll be honest with you, I’m super excited. this will be my first Xcelerate as a Fastlian. and of course it’s in the best place I would say it you know, ne you can’t beat New York, right? So this Xcelerate in New York will be will be amazing.
Kate Holterhoff (00:57)
I am so looking forward to going to New York. I I try to get there once a year, although I don’t always make it. I’m based here in Atlanta, so I you know the weather tends to be a little nicer in October. And you know, just in general, there’s so much fun stuff to do. I’m I personally am hoping to to pop into the Met if I can make it, although I know my my schedule tends to get a little out of control. But yes, couldn’t couldn’t think of a better place to be spending
a little bit of time here. So let’s just get down to some of the brass tacks in terms of what Fastly Xcelerate is. So you know it’s happening on October the fourteenth, which is again next month coming up real quick. and any other details like how would you describe to someone who’s never been there what Fastly Xcelerate is?
Samir Sherif (01:39)
I I I would describe
it and then like I said, you pick the right one, the light right location for sure. I think the
Kate Holterhoff (01:44)
Great.
Samir Sherif (01:45)
way I would describe it, and again, this is going to be in Madison Avenue, it’s a one-day event. It’s built around engineering and security leaders, including CISOs, who are really are kind of like I would say solving real problems at a global scale. So, you know, it’s it’s not about product pitches. it’s really about talking about the current challenges, solving the problems.
and to give you context and examples, some of the things that I’m looking forward to in this event, and like they’ll be like Paramount delivering the kind of kind of like how they do the high-stakes live events in the World Cup and Super Bowl, right? And we’ll have Wayfair talking about the developer life lifecycle from edge with compute, and all the way down to handing features to A AI agents to kind of to get through the building and test and verify process.
We’ll have Weather Company, we’ll have a bunch of others, and you know, talking about mission critical systems with the AI traffic, and you know, including lifetime and interesting ones too are ones that are really going into a little bit more about the AI capabilities and how we work with them to help them kind of close some of those gaps and layering multiple security controls on the platforms, right, from a defense perspective. So I think
you know, AI driven bots, malicious traffic, all those exciting topics are what we’re going be covering with, you know, prospects and customers. So I’m really looking forward to that.
Kate Holterhoff (03:09)
That’s fantastic. I love it when vendors give us a breakdown of where they are on AI because my goodness, it changes every month. So having having you address, you know, w what’s what’s new and and how you’re grappling with some of the large issues around agents, I is something I I yes I will be looking forward to. But then also hearing a lot about the customer stories. My colleague James Governor has been to a few Fastly Accelerates at this point.
And he speaks very highly of the customer stories. I mean, they’re so important for us as analysts and for folks who are just trying to understand the the situation around tech and enterprise concerns right now. You know, hearing those real life stories is just invaluable. So I I I know that I’m gonna get a lot out of this.
Samir Sherif (03:52)
I you will and the world has changed as we all know. So it’ll be timely and the topics should cover most of what’s already in top of mind for folks.
Kate Holterhoff (04:02)
Yes. Okay. So Samir, you are going to be leading a session which looks absolutely incredible. Talk to me about what you have prepared.
Samir Sherif (04:10)
I’m actually moderating kind of like it’s it’s it’s gonna be closing, you know, towards the closing panel. the topic is securing modern attack surface in the age of AI. what does make this a little bit interesting is the unusual mix. So I invited the CISO of a technology company from a you know power technology company and and head of security advisory from a bank, global bank, and also the what I would say the
public p private partnerships. So we have representatives from the from the government to also chime in in the panel. And and the idea behind it is really to get a three sixty view, which you rar you rarely get in in in in most panels. and what I wanted to frame this really is kind of like w what are we concerned about today? Like so for example, in in in back in spring I was part of the
co-authors and the mythos ready. So there’s gonna be an AI element to it with the advent of the Mythos class technologies are coming out with AI and and some of those models. But you know thinking through challenges and you know what is on top of mind concern with CISOs. top of mind for me too is like we know that
There is an explosion of exploits that are coming out, right? And being discovered through these models. so the conversation is gonna take us to talk about how the evolution of AI and the speed of attacks that we’re seeing is really impacting how we think about security. because autonomous attacks have changed the game. reconnaissance runs through, you know.
From your network layer all the way to exploitation, the lateral movements are happening and they all run through APIs. So the panel conversation is like how do we think about risk? How do we think about resilience, business recovery, but also how do we think about the threat actors and how they’re also leveraging these types of models? so bringing these three different personas to the conversation and the panel will elicit a lot of conversation around not only protection, but also how do we
build resilience, but also, you know, as you know, as as a former operating CISO, like how do I we make the company that we’re trying to protect a little bit more interesting for the adversaries to come after, right? So I think we’re gonna jump into various different topics and I’m pushing the panel on the really key three things. One is the operating model, from triage all the way down to you know you know discovering the attack but also
coverage by chainability. We know like harness we’ll change five different lows into f full, you know, ac account takeovers, for example. The second is the board level and executive level conversation. The concern now is, you know, we don’t we no longer want to measure, you know, you know, the the the number of vulnerabilities and you know patching times. It’s really more about time to you know the exposure of the containment, the coverage.
I mean, so the terminologies have already begun to change at the executive level, including the board. So, you know, those are the key things that are gonna be very important to to think about how we look at vendor solutions and products and capabilities so we can measure and build resilience better. And the third piece, I think, is one that I talked to various CISOs when I was traveling the the past few months, is a differentiation, right? So the differentiation comes from
The pressures from the regulators and threat actors and the whole tempo has changed. So I expect, you know, we’re gonna be diving into all those topics with the with the panelists, and they will bring their perspectives based on you know what they’re dealing with on the ground.
Kate Holterhoff (08:06)
Well I am very much looking forward to attending that session, especially because my own work at RedMonk has has really focused on supply chain security issues, so not only SBOMs, but also, some of the attacks that we’ve seen, including the the Hugging Face one, and even like RubyGems. So there you there there seems like a new one in the headlines every day. and and I I think Fastly is really in a unique place to be dealing with that.
okay, so let’s go ahead and wrap up with some call to actions here. so yeah, everybody should go and get registered, hang out with Samir and I. it’s Fastly Xcelerate New York one day event on October 14th at Convene 360 on Madison Avenue. and if you want to check out the full agenda, I’ll be posting a link in our show notes. And Samir, thanks so much for joining me today to chat about all the cool stuff that folks are going to experience.
Samir Sherif (08:57)
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
