Security Teams:
Stop Getting in the Way of AI.
Start Leading It.
Security teams have a choice to make about AI.
Slow it down and wait for policy to catch up — or figure out how to ship it safely, faster than anyone else. Raj Umadas argues only one of those keeps the team relevant. The orgs that win the next few years won't be the ones that blocked AI the longest — they'll be the ones where security became the reason the business could move instead of the reason it couldn't.
Raj has spent his career on the deeply technical end of security — from building MITM tooling shown at BlackHat to running security at high-traffic consumer platforms. In this session he makes the case for security as the function that leads AI adoption: how to say yes without losing control, where the real risks are versus the imagined ones, and what it takes to go from guarding the gate to setting the direction.
What you’ll learn
- Saying yesHow to greenlight AI adoption without giving up control of where data, models, and access actually live.
- Real vs imagined riskWhere the actual exposure is in AI rollouts today — and which scary-sounding scenarios are mostly noise.
- Leading, not gatingMoving security from the team that blocks AI to the team that sets the direction for how the business uses it.
- Shipping at speedPatterns Raj has used at Underdog, Spotify, Etsy, Squarespace, and WeWork to keep security moving as fast as product.
- Staying relevantWhy the orgs that win the next few years will be the ones where security became the reason the business could move.
Raj Umadas
Raj currently leads security at Underdog and has built and run security programs at some of the most recognizable names in consumer tech, including Spotify, Etsy, Squarespace, and WeWork. He started on the deeply technical end of the field, building the Mallory MITM proxy he presented at BlackHat and earning a patent in secure device pairing. He is opinionated, technical to the core, and has spent his career proving security can move at the speed of the business.