Speaker 1:

From the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, welcome Inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange is your go-to for the latest on markets, leadership, vision, and business. For over 230 years, the NYSE has been the beating heart of global growth. Each week, we bring you inspiring stories of innovators, job creators, and the movers and shakers of capitalism, here at the NYSE and ICE's exchanges around the world. Now, let's go inside the ICE House. Let's your host Lance Glenn.

Lance Glinn:

Cloud security is evolving rapidly as threats become more complex, fast-moving, and increasingly automated. Security teams are under pressure to detect and respond to incidents in real time, often with limited resources and growing alert fatigue. AI is emerging as a powerful ally by helping teams analyze massive amounts of data, surface meaningful insights, and automate repetitive tasks. This shift enables security teams to be more proactive, efficient, and focused in an increasingly high-stakes environment. Sysdig is revolutionizing cloud security by combining deep insights with real-time threat detection. Through innovation, the company empowers teams to detect, investigate, and respond to threats faster and with greater accuracy. Our guest today, Sysdig CEO, Bill Welch, has been in the role for less than a year, but is hard at work, accelerating company growth and global footprint and helping these security teams identify and respond to risk. Bill, thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.

Bill Welch:

Thanks for having me, Lance. What a great place.

Lance Glinn:

Yeah, it is. It's a great place to record a podcast, great ambiance. Obviously, the NYSE, 233 years of history, so we're always excited when CEOs like yourself come and join us here at the stock exchange. And you stepped into the CEO role at Sysdig at a critical juncture for the cyber security and cloud security industry. First and foremost, before we talk about Sysdig and the rest of your journey, just what inspired you to take on this opportunity, and what was it about Sysdig's mission or market position that convinced you that this was the right place for your next stop in the career?

Bill Welch:

Yeah. Lance, I think first let's look at the cloud market overall. I mean, the cloud market right now is about a trillion dollars. It's a massive opportunity right now. And in 10 years, it's going to grow to about $5 trillion. So when you think about that market in itself, what a privilege it is to serve that market. I think the market, that industry that we're in is cloud security. So cloud security, roughly about a $50 billion industry right now, and it's going to grow to about 150 billion. So first, it was the opportunity. It was, what could we do to help customers and partners and prospects really unleash their cyber security potential and make sure that we could come alongside them as they go on this cloud and how they're going to help navigate it in all different industries, financial, healthcare, retail, whatever it might be.

As far as joining Sysdig, I will tell you that what attracted me to the company was, one, it was an open source company. It was a company that basically said, we're going to be very open as we start to look at our technology, how we actually work with people, how we pull our technology in, how we're going to make sure that we service that community. As a matter of fact, it was founded under a founder who started Wireshark and Falco. When you look at those open source communities, we have industries where 60% of the Fortune 500 companies are using Falco, hundreds of millions of users and some of the biggest names you could imagine, Apple, IBM, AWS, all using and leveraging the Falco open source, which is what Sysdig was built on.

Lance Glinn:

Your three decades of experience include C-suite roles of companies like Zscaler, IronNet, Talkdesk, obviously now, Sysdig. These roles have given you sort of a front row seat to the evolution of the tech and the cloud security landscape. How have these past experiences really shaped your leadership style overall and how you're overseeing Sysdig?

Bill Welch:

I think you described them really well. They were companies that were revolutionary, in many cases, transformational, large scale companies, when you think of Symantec and HP and Oracle, some of the larger companies that I had the privilege of being a part of. When you look at companies like Zscaler and some of the ones you mentioned in duo, they were doing things that were very difficult, things that many people were not even thinking about. A matter of fact, I remember joining Zscaler, and in the first, call it thousand customer interactions I had, many people said, no, I'm not going to go to the cloud. I love my blinking lights. I love hugging my appliances sitting in the data center. And I will tell you that many times, we had to explain to them where they were going versus where they were. So that's the one thing that I learned, was about scale, transformational nature of companies, and really revolutionary technologies, which is what Sysdig is doing also.

Lance Glinn:

And how hard was that convincing? Because you look at it now, and it's like, man, what didn't these people see? Clearly, the cloud is the way to go. But how hard was that convincing way back when you were, say at Zscaler?

Bill Welch:

Incredibly difficult. You had to have a relentless pursuit. When Zscaler went public, as you know, they were about a $2 billion market cap. Now, just recently they reported they're almost 40 billion. So when you think about how much ceiling we have available, how large the opportunity and time that's available to us in this market, it's immeasurable. And that's what's so attractive of being not only in cyber, but also at a company like Sysdig, who is actually helping transform cloud security.

Lance Glinn:

And you mentioned the thousands of communications that you had with clients, and I'm sure that number has only grown, obviously, as your career has progressed. I'm assuming that communication aspect is such an important leadership trait to have, especially at a company where sometimes you need to explain, in simpler terms, what you do. So what are some, along with that, some of the leadership traits that you have noticed and learned and carried on from job to job that you now apply to Sysdig, a company, excuse me, that has achieved so much with still so much room to get even greater?

Bill Welch:

I would say watching and observing and being mentored by some of the biggest titans in tech that you could imagine. And these are individuals from a John Thompson to Enrique Salem. These are individuals that were past CEOs of Symantec to a Meg Whitman at HP. And just observing them and seeing how they actually interacted with prospects, customers, partners, but most importantly employees, their directness, their transparency, and listening to the customer. If you listen long enough, the customer will tell you exactly where you need to go as a company. The other thing that I just want to highlight is employees. One of the things that I had in the last 120, 180 days of being at the company is going all over the world and spending time with employees and listening to them, because all the answers to all the complex challenges we have are in the minds and in the hearts of our employees. All we have to do is listen. And that's one thing that I'm really excited about, I've done at every single company as a listening tour.

Lance Glinn:

And you mentioned 120, 180 days. You started at Sysdig towards the end of 2024. And transitions, no matter the role you're transitioning into or the company you're transitioning into, often come with that steep learning curve. Can you just walk us through those first 30, 60, 90 days as CEO? What were key insights you gained about the team, Sysdig's past successes and challenges, and how the company stacks up in the cloud security landscape?

Bill Welch:

Yeah. Our founder, Loris, took on a very, very big mission, and that was to really change how people thought about cloud security. So cloud security is no longer about notifications and scanning. It is about making it real-time runtime and open. And that is what he did. And along those lines, what he did was he actually brought in experts, whether it was another CEO prior to me who actually helped them take them through the last chapter. And now, they have to go to a mode of scaling, scaling it, whether it's with customers, whether it's with partners, whether it's making sure that we are a key component of the fabric of cyber. And that is what my plan is. My plan is to make sure that we leverage all the great install base we have.

Right now, we have three out of the top four banks in Australia. We have over half of the largest banks in Europe, and some of the largest right here in the United States. And that's just in the financial services. I could go on and on about other industries about where we actually are leading, but I think that Sysdig has just started its journey to helping people understand how to secure their cloud security environments.

Lance Glinn:

And so you talk about scaling and you're trying to scale in an industry in a space that's very competitive, where you have a lot of others that are trying to do the same thing you're doing. So how would you describe the biggest differentiator? What would you describe as the biggest differentiator for Sysdig, allowing you to get into these big banks in the financial services industry, and across other industries you're working in, really make a dent in the footprint and become a leader?

Bill Welch:

I would say that most of the industries I've talked about, they already know who Sysdig is from their Falco heritage. The largest open source technology is within Falco, so they already know what are the things that they need to use, and the products and the way that they can deliver it. So number one is we already start from that position, that we don't have to really teach them or educate them. I think the second thing that's happening within this industry is the open source where there's a leverage model. There's a leverage model to where now, they can share information. There's also the model of AI. I mean, we're going to talk about AI.

Lance Glinn:

Yeah, 100%.

Bill Welch:

I'm confident of that. But our ability to where we can run time on the infrastructure. So our agent sits there. It actually is not a side scan. It's not the ability to where you're just pulling data. You're getting live information. It's almost like a radar system on the infrastructure saying this is what's happening, because a breach happens at about 10 minutes. That's how much time you have to go in and make sure that you respond to that breach. The nice thing about Sysdig is we can respond in five seconds, we can investigate in less than five minutes, and then we can respond in less than five minutes. So we basically close the gap of time between something occurring and being able to fix it.

Lance Glinn:

So let's talk about AI.

Bill Welch:

Yeah.

Lance Glinn:

You mentioned we're going to talk about it. Let's talk about it. And I want to start with Sysdig Sage. It was introduced in July of 2024. It's a generative -- it's Sysdig's generative AI assistant for cloud security. And then before we just dive into how it's performing and its numbers, can you just give our listeners a clear overview of what Sysdig Sage is and the specific challenges that it's designed to address?

Bill Welch:

Yeah, I think that AI, there's two ways of looking at it. There's security for AI, and there's AI for security. So we actually do both. So what you'll see, as AI becomes even more and more prevalent in all these corporations, and even in our own personal lives, is how do you secure it? How do you make sure that this environment is not going to impact our daily lives and our companies? Matter of fact, this morning, we saw our first code generation of a cyber threat using AI with our threat research team. So one, we're making sure that we're looking at security for AI from that lens. The second is AI for security, and that's where you mentioned Sage, is now that we have this brilliant agent sitting on the infrastructure, giving us that radar view and giving us information, now it's about the operators. It's about the practitioners. How do we make sure that we're putting tools in their hands so they can be more productive and more efficient?

It's not any more the days of, okay, I'm just going to go look at all these vulnerabilities and these scans, and I'm going to weed through all this data. It's how do I use AI to know exactly where I'm going to go, what I should do? And in some cases, the mundane tasks can be automated. Matter of fact, one of our largest healthcare customers, every morning this security operations team walks into the office, they ask the Sage AI, our technology, five questions, and it's those five questions that will determine their day of where they need to focus their time. So whether it's AI or whether it's Agentic AI, that is what Sage will deliver for the cyber market.

Lance Glinn:

And with Sage, I want to specifically highlight this number. You announced in March, 337% growth in Sysdig Sage adoption over just eight months, a clear sign that, obviously, something's working. So what sets, because we talked about what differentiates Sysdig from competitors in the space, but what specifically sets Sage apart from other AI tools on the market, allowing it to see such a significant increase in adoption over just a few short months?

Bill Welch:

I think that most people are using AI as a chatbot, and that's not what we're doing. What we're doing is we're first leveraging that agent. I want to keep going back to that, that it's about runtime real-time. It's about being able to have the information within seconds so that you can actually react. So now, if you combine that type of technology with the practitioner, and then sitting on their side, I guess you could say as a co-pilot, to where now they have this AI that can actually help them do their jobs and make it more effective, and in many cases, maybe give them insights that they weren't even thinking about, so they can say, no, go down this path, versus going down the three other paths they've done in the past with no assistance from a very, very robust AI Sage environment.

Lance Glinn:

And so as more organizations integrate AI, and I feel like pretty much all of them have across industries, right? Regardless of whether you're in finance, or tech, or retail, you've introduced AI in some way, shape, or form. So as more organizations integrate AI into their security workflows, how do you see the role of the CISO and the broader just security team as a whole evolving? Do you believe that tools like Sysdig Sage will just sort of fundamentally change the way security is approached and practiced?

Bill Welch:

Absolutely. I think it's changing on both sides, the offensive and the defensive. On the defensive, our ability now to be able to go faster, be more efficient, be more productive. But also on the offensive side, the individuals that want to do us harm are also leveraging it. So it is the same race. It's the race of, how much faster can we go versus the individuals that are trying to do US harm? What I will tell you is the CISOs that I speak to, all of them are trying to figure out how do I not only use AI for security, but also how do I do security for AI? They've got a combination challenge right now, is how do they actually use a tool that can be incredibly beneficial, but also, how do they secure it? And that's the benefit of our relationships with our customers.

Lance Glinn:

So speaking to just GenAI and Agentic AI as well, over the next few years, how do you really see all this evolving? If this is going to potentially change the way CISOs work, if they're looking for the security for the AI, as well as the AI security, how do you see all of this going two, three years down the line with a technology that is evolving almost at a daily rate now?

Bill Welch:

I think that number one is it's going to help these individuals who are already overwhelmed. We know, and you see the statistics about the number of open headcount that we have in cyber. So we're already behind, as we know. So a lot of people like to say, well, AI is going to replace the human. Not in cyber, it's not. In cyber, what's happening is it's actually going to make the human better.

It's going to make it more efficient and actually help them bring up their level of productivity to where it can be responsive to the offensive attacks that are happening. So I don't see a world where AI is going to replace people within the cyber operations teams. What I see is it's going to be an amazing platform for them to help them become a better security operations center. In many cases, a CISO be able to answer that question when they get the phone call that says, these three vulnerabilities hit my infrastructure, what is going on? And the board wants that answer in five minutes, not five days.

Lance Glinn:

And how do you go about convincing... We talked about convincing earlier, convincing, back in the Zscaler days, to go from your traditional data centers to cloud. How do you go about convincing this adoption of AI and using a product like Sysdig Sage? Because there are a lot of cautions and a lot of hesitations when it comes to AI adoptions, because you said, you don't think AI is going to replace people, but that is a worry for a lot of people. So how do you go about convincing them that, no, this product is not going to replace you, it's going to help you?

Bill Welch:

A couple ways. One is because we have an open source community, sharing of this information of real use cases, of where... The one I mentioned about the healthcare. Also, we actually do business value studies. We are actually showing our customers and our partners how they can take the power of AI, and in this case, Sysdig Sage, and be able to showcase to their CFO, their board, what is the financial impacts of leveraging this platform. So I think that's what's going to really help our executives, and even the practitioners, to articulate and translate how cyber can be not only a big change agent for them, for helping secure their environment, but also helping them to understand the financials of a company and the impact that AI can make on them.

Lance Glinn:

And I mentioned how industries all over are adopting AI technology, GenAI, Agentic AI, whatever it might be, even if they're just using chatbots. As it becomes increasingly integrated into security tools and businesses alike, how are you approaching the challenges of maintaining trust, transparency, accountability, not just for what Sage does, but for really all of Sysdig?

Bill Welch:

Yes. So a couple ways is I think that when you build security in the open and you have a community supporting it, that tells you the type of security company that we are. Most cybersecurity companies have proprietary closed environments, their platforms. Ours is out. Ours is right out there where people can see it. They can contribute to it. They can give insights and input. So I think that that's how we can make sure that individuals understand where we're going, and it's going to make us better. We all know when a community comes around and we all work together, great things happen.

Lance Glinn:

So Sysdig Sage is obviously only one of the tools that Sysdig offers, and I find that innovation often comes along to solve a problem. There's a need or a problem that needs to be solved, and it's up to companies like yours to innovate and create a product to ultimately solve whatever the issue might be. So from your perspective, not just with Sage, but innovation as a whole, what have security leaders been overlooking or misunderstanding that creates the demand for solutions like a Sage providing and securing the modern cloud environments?

Bill Welch:

I think that the security executives have a very difficult job. They have to translate how cyber impacts business value. They are always under pressure and duress on budgets. They're also serve at the pleasure of boards who are getting all kinds of risk, posture and cybersecurity questions of them. So what I'll tell you is I don't really think that they're missing anything. I think that these group of individuals are heroic in what they try to do each and every day. What our job is to do is to bring them platforms that are going to help them solve these business problems faster, whether it's financial risk, governance, compliance. And that's what we are doing, whether it's not only Sysdig, but the overall community, because this is not just about one company. This is about a community of individuals, as I mentioned in Falco, but it's also about the overall cyber community, because we know that there are individuals that want to do US personal harm, corporate harm, and nation state harm. So that's why I'm excited to be part of this industry.

Lance Glinn:

So with these success of products like Sage, it's obviously easy then to see the 337 number and focus on rapid growth. However, strategic growth, in my opinion, is crucial to avoid overextending and putting a burden on the resources that you have. How do you balance investing in key areas while maintaining that discipline needed to keep the company on a sustainable path forward?

Bill Welch:

I think it's a good question to balance keeping the lights on and making sure people are actually getting the results of the platform, and then driving innovation. And I saw that many of the companies you've already mentioned, and I think that the same thing we've done at Sysdig. We've actually split that. We've said we have our product and engineering team that are going to make sure that customer feature requests are met. We're making sure that the platform we committed to them is being delivered. But then on the innovation, our founder, Loris, who founded Wireshark, and Stratashark, and Falco, he's spending time thinking about what is the next phase of this environment? What is the next phase of cloud security, which is exactly how Sage AI was developed. So I will tell you that that's the thing that's exciting, is being able to have two different lanes, although they intersect every single day, to make sure that we meet the current demands while focusing on the future outcomes.

Lance Glinn:

And I want to pivot back to... We obviously started our discussion talking about your transition into Sysdig, started in late 2024. Transitions often involved setting a new culture. You're able to get fresh eyes onto everything that's been going on, and it's important to have a tone that aligns with key stakeholders, whether that be shareholders, employees, customers, others in the C-suite. How have you approached just overall building trust and alignment with your leadership team employees and, again, as I mentioned, probably the most important stakeholder, or maybe one of the two most important stakeholders, as we sit here at the NYC, but customers?

Bill Welch:

Yes. Well, as I mentioned, it's really important to go and meet with customers, prospects, and partners, and employees all over the world. And listen, one of the things I do with employees is, whether I have breakfast, lunch or dinners with them, or any type of engagements, I ask them, what is your executive order? What's the one thing you would do if you were me? And I'm keeping that running tally, and that list is extensive. Because like I said, they know what we need to do, and my job is to keep checking through them, set the strategy and vision as a result of listening to the customer's, prospects, partners, and employees. What I will tell you, the other thing that's been very helpful to the company is pulling the top leaders together in the company and saying, where are we directionally going? I put the pen in their hands and say, what does world-class look like at a functional department level and a cross-functional collaboration?

So how can we set a one-page, not 20 pages of what we're going to do and all these different metrics and key results, but what are the things that are going to make a difference in the company, whether it's our path to a certain revenue model, whether it's innovation, whether it's raving fans, operational excellence, and people, so that the individual who serves the company can now understand how I am tethered to the CEO, to the board at an individual level? And now, they have, and as we call it internally, their victory plan. They know exactly what they need to do each and every day to meet those criteria that they put together, and we all decided to come together as a team.

Lance Glinn:

And so coming in to Sysdig with a fresh perspective, you've had the opportunity to really identify key areas of growth. Looking ahead, as we now look two, three, four, five years down the line, what opportunities or which opportunities do you see as ones that are really promising, allow you and your team to really elevate the company in the coming years?

Bill Welch:

I would say there's multiple things that are going to help the company. Number one is our channel and partners. You cannot go this alone in this market. You have to have technology partners, which we have extensive ones. You have to have great partners that are going to help companies navigate their cyber journey. You also have to make sure that the employees understand what their roles are, and they thinking about creative ideas to help transform the company. So I think that the growth opportunity is extensive. I also think that our open source community is helping us identify what are the things around corners that we can start to invest in. So the nice thing for us is that we have multiple inputs coming to us, whether it's the customers, whether it's the partners, whether it's the employees, or whether it's the open source community, helping us drive our next chapter of the company, and give us optionality to figure out what is the next chapter of Sysdig.

Lance Glinn:

Are there trends that either the community or customers, or even you and your leadership team and your employees are seeing that you think could sort of dictate what cyber and cloud security looks like in the next five, 10 years?

Bill Welch:

Absolutely. I will tell you that it's a better together mentality. One of the things that I'm encouraged by is that we know what we do really well. We are a cloud security company. Now, there are ecosystem technologies that tie into our technology to where instead of us going and saying, we're going to try to be all things to all people... And a lot of my competition is doing that, A lot of my competition is saying, well, I'm going to do this, this, this, and this. The reality is that we think that we're going to stay very focused in our lane. We're going to partner very closely with those that are subject matter experts, whether it's a DevSec code company, whether it's another company that we integrate with in order to deliver these solutions, but I think it's important that you stay very focused on what you do well.

Lance Glinn:

Absolutely. So Bill, as we begin to wrap up our conversation and you approach your first year, in just a few short months, leading Sysdig, how do you envision the company's direction under your leadership three, four, five years down the line?

Bill Welch:

I mentioned the word optionality. I think that's important, whether it's in your personal or professional life, is you always want have options. And one of the things that we're building at Sysdig is we're building an environment where we go next, really is decided by what we do as a team, whether that means an IPO, whether that means M&A, whether that means we buy companies, whether that means we stay private. We want to create optionality for our shareholders, which not only are the investors, but also our employees. And that's something that I drive each and every day, is create the optionality so that you don't have just one option. You have multiple options to determine the future of Sysdig.

Lance Glinn:

And if there's a message you could give to your employees or customers about Sysdig's future, about how you are plotting the company, you and your leadership team are plotting the company to remain successful, to potentially reach those goals that you had mentioned just now, three, four, five years down the line, what would that message be?

Bill Welch:

I think the message would be is how we started it. The opportunity and the market is massive. We are just beginning. We are really in the early stages of this market. I think five, 10 years down the road is still not even a long enough horizon yet, because I think that this market's going to continue to evolve. That's the thing that's great about cyber. It's constantly changing, it's always adapting, but we also have to think about how we're going to overcome the obstacles, whether that be a nation state, or whether that be just somebody that wants to make our days not go so well.

Lance Glinn:

Yeah.

Bill Welch:

But that's the one thing I'm excited about for our teams.

Lance Glinn:

Well, bill, you mentioned that it's constantly evolving, constantly changing. We talked earlier about how AI is almost evolving on a daily basis Now. I appreciate you joining me to talk about it, to discuss all the great things you're doing at Sysdig, and I appreciate you for joining me Inside the ICE House.

Bill Welch:

Thanks for having me, Lance. Great time with you.

Speaker 1:

That's our conversation for this week. Remember to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen, and follow us on X @icehousepodcast. From the New York Stock Exchange, we'll talk to you again next week Inside the ICE House. Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of the information, and do not sponsor, approve, or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.