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Sumedh Thakar

President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, QUALYS INC

Search every verified Sumedh Thakar interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Sumedh Thakar, president and CEO of Qualys, has recently discussed the accelerating pace of cyber threats and the need for organizations to shift from traditional vulnerability management toward risk-based prioritization and faster remediation. At Qualys’ ROCon conference in Austin, Texas, he spoke with Steve Lasky of Endeavor Business Media about moving security teams beyond counting vulnerabilities to understanding which exposures represent actual business risks, and he emphasized the importance of building confidence in automated patching to avoid business outages. He also argued that with attackers using AI to reverse engineer patches within hours, organizations no longer have the 30 days they once had to fix critical vulnerabilities, and he advocated for what he called “zero-day remediation” — detecting and addressing critical findings within 24 hours of an advisory’s release. In other appearances, Thakar addressed the impact of the Mythos vulnerability, describing it as accelerating an existing threat rather than creating a new one, and he noted that boards are now asking how companies will counter autonomous AI-based exploits, with manual remediation no longer a sufficient answer. He also discussed the role of AI in both attack and defense, suggesting that improved models could help software developers detect vulnerabilities before attackers do, potentially reducing zero-day risks. Additionally, Thakar participated in a fireside chat at Black Hat 2026 comparing cricket and cybersecurity, where he highlighted Qualys’ early involvement in promoting cricket in the United States and drew parallels between calm execution in sport and effective security strategy.

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“I think we have the opportunity to really uh you know I I think I draw parallel in the conference about autonomous uh driving right. So we are taking whimos and cyber cabs and you know zoot and all kinds of different things where we're putting our life in an autonomous driving car. So somehow we got comfortable with letting that car drive at 80 miles an hour figuring out on its own what it needs to do. Um and that's ”

“I think when you ask me how realistic it is, there is an implication that there is an option or a choice and I don't see that as a choice because the attackers are controlling the narrative here. Right. And I would say that look I mean remediation has always existed but it has been very manual because of the fear of a potential outage if you do something right and in the past like I said it's always about the threat ”

“We are moving from the concept of a zero day vulnerability more towards the idea of zero day remediation and what does that mean? I'm more of an optimist about the AI models and so when I look at it I feel that as these models get better there are more open source models as well, every software development shop will have access to use these models to detect their own vulnerabilities before attackers do, which means t”

“I think look, you see all these boots around and people are just talking about their AI and their cyber this and cyber that. Qualys is taking a very different approach in terms of cricket in America, and I think I'm very excited about the opportunity of a sport that is absolutely adored and loved by two billion people worldwide has the opportunity to really become big in America. And as we have done in so many areas ”

“The number one thing for CISOs to remember is that they are a business partner and when they talk about business, it's less about the specific technology and more about the concept of risk management. Technologies will come and go, but the idea that the CISO needs to provide the board and the CEO a visibility into the overall risk of loss to the business and how much they're spending and is the loss all the risk unde”

“Cyber security is a risk management exercise for the company at the end of the day and so we don't have unlimited budgets we can't fix everything we can't go after everything. And so this was not as big of a thought process when we had lesser infrastructure just a few thousand servers and people had 90 days to fix because the attack vector was not as quick.”

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