Rick Caccia, CEO and Co-Founding father of WitnessAI, has in depth expertise in launching safety and compliance merchandise. He has held management roles in product and advertising and marketing at Palo Alto Networks, Google, and Symantec. Caccia beforehand led product advertising and marketing at ArcSight by means of its IPO and subsequent operations as a public firm and served as the primary Chief Advertising Officer at Exabeam. He holds a number of levels from the College of California, Berkeley.
WitnessAI is growing a safety platform centered on guaranteeing the secure and safe use of AI in enterprises. With every main technological shift—comparable to net, cellular, and cloud computing—new safety challenges emerge, creating alternatives for business leaders to emerge. AI represents the subsequent frontier on this evolution.
The corporate goals to ascertain itself as a pacesetter in AI safety by combining experience in machine studying, cybersecurity, and large-scale cloud operations. Its group brings deep expertise in AI improvement, reverse engineering, and multi-cloud Kubernetes deployment, addressing the important challenges of securing AI-driven applied sciences.
What impressed you to co-found WitnessAI, and what key challenges in AI governance and safety have been you aiming to resolve?
Once we first began the corporate, we thought that safety groups can be involved about assaults on their inner AI fashions. As a substitute, the primary 15 CISOs we spoke with mentioned the alternative, that widespread company LLM rollout was a great distance off, however the pressing drawback was defending their staff’ use of different folks’s AI apps. We took a step again and noticed that the issue wasn’t warding off scary cyberattacks, it was safely enabling corporations to make use of AI productively. Whereas governance possibly much less horny than cyberattacks, it’s what safety and privateness groups truly wanted. They wanted visibility of what their staff have been doing with third-party AI, a method to implement acceptable use insurance policies, and a method to shield information with out blocking use of that information. In order that’s what we constructed.
Given your in depth expertise at Google Cloud, Palo Alto Networks, and different cybersecurity companies, how did these roles affect your method to constructing WitnessAI?
I’ve spoken with many CISOs over time. Some of the frequent issues I hear from CISOs right this moment is, “I don’t need to be ‘Physician No’ on the subject of AI; I need to assist our staff use it to be higher.” As somebody who has labored with cybersecurity distributors for a very long time, it is a very completely different assertion. It’s extra harking back to the dotcom-era, again when the Net was a brand new and transformative know-how. Once we constructed WitnessAI, we particularly began with product capabilities that helped prospects undertake AI safely; our message was that these items is like magic and naturally everybody needs to expertise magic. I believe that safety corporations are too fast to play the worry card, and we needed to be completely different.
What units WitnessAI other than different AI governance and safety platforms available in the market right this moment?
Nicely, for one factor, most different distributors within the area are centered totally on the safety half, and never on the governance half. To me, governance is just like the brakes on a automobile. In the event you actually need to get someplace shortly, you want efficient brakes along with a strong engine. Nobody goes to drive a Ferrari very quick if it has no brakes. On this case, your organization utilizing AI is the Ferrari, and WitnessAI is the brakes and steering wheel.
In distinction, most of our rivals concentrate on theoretical scary assaults on a company’s AI mannequin. That may be a actual drawback, however it’s a unique drawback than getting visibility and management over how my staff are utilizing any of the 5,000+ AI apps already on the web. It’s loads simpler for us so as to add an AI firewall (and we have now) than it’s for the AI firewall distributors so as to add efficient governance and threat administration.
How does WitnessAI stability the necessity for AI innovation with enterprise safety and compliance?
As I wrote earlier, we consider that AI must be like magic – it may possibly assist you do superb issues. With that in thoughts, we predict AI innovation and safety are linked. In case your staff can use AI safely, they may use it usually and you’ll pull forward. In the event you apply the everyday safety mindset and lock it down, your competitor received’t do this, and they’re going to pull forward. Every part we do is about enabling secure adoption of AI. As one buyer advised me, “These things is magic, however most distributors deal with it prefer it was black magic, scary and one thing to worry.” At WitnessAI, we’re serving to to allow the magic.
Are you able to speak in regards to the firm’s core philosophy relating to AI governance—do you see AI safety as an enabler moderately than a restriction?
We commonly have CISOs come as much as us at occasions the place we have now offered, they usually inform us, “Your rivals are all about how scary AI is, and you’re the solely vendor that’s telling us the best way to truly use it successfully.” Sundar Pichai at Google has mentioned that “AI could possibly be extra profound than hearth,” and that’s an fascinating metaphor. Fireplace may be extremely damaging, as we have now seen just lately. However managed hearth could make metal, which accelerates innovation. Typically at WitnessAI we discuss creating the innovation that allows our prospects to soundly direct AI “hearth” to create the equal of metal. Alternatively, if you happen to assume AI is akin to magic, then maybe our aim is to present you a magic wand, to direct and management it.
In both case, we completely consider that safely enabling AI is the aim. Simply to present you an instance, there are lots of information loss prevention (DLP) instruments, it’s a know-how that’s been round ceaselessly. And folks attempt to apply DLP to AI use, and possibly the DLP browser plug in sees that you’ve got typed in an extended immediate asking for assist together with your work, and that immediate advertently has a buyer ID quantity in it. What occurs? The DLP product blocks the immediate from going out, and also you by no means get a solution. That’s restriction. As a substitute, with WItnessAI, we are able to determine the identical quantity, and silently and surgically redact it on the fly, after which unredact it within the AI response, so that you just get a helpful reply whereas additionally preserving your information secure. That’s enablement.
What are the most important dangers enterprises face when deploying generative AI, and the way does WitnessAI mitigate them?
The primary is visibility. Many individuals are stunned to be taught that the AI utility universe isn’t simply ChatGPT and now DeepSeek; there are actually hundreds of AI apps on the web and enterprises take in dangers from staff utilizing these apps, so step one is getting visibility: which AI apps are my staff utilizing, what are they doing with these apps, and is it dangerous?
The second is management. Your authorized group has constructed a complete acceptable use coverage for AI, one which ensures the protection of buyer information, citizen information, mental property, in addition to worker security. How will you implement this coverage? Is it in your endpoint safety product? In your firewall? In your VPN? In your cloud? What if they’re all from completely different distributors? So, you want a method to outline and implement acceptable use coverage that’s constant throughout AI fashions, apps, clouds, and safety merchandise.
The third is safety of your individual apps. In 2025, we are going to see a lot quicker adoption of LLMs inside enterprises, after which quicker rollout of chat apps powered by these LLMs. So, enterprises want to verify not solely that the apps are protected, but additionally that the apps don’t say “dumb” issues, like suggest a competitor.
We deal with all three. We offer visibility into which apps individuals are accessing, how they’re utilizing these apps, coverage that’s primarily based on who you might be and what you are attempting to do, and really efficient instruments for stopping assaults comparable to jailbreaks or undesirable behaviors out of your bots.
How does WitnessAI’s AI observability characteristic assist corporations observe worker AI utilization and stop “shadow AI” dangers?
WitnessAI connects to your community simply and silently builds a catalog of each AI app (and there are actually hundreds of them on the web) that your staff’ entry. We inform you the place these apps are situated, the place they host their information, and many others so that you just perceive how dangerous these apps are. You possibly can activate dialog visibility, the place we use deep packet inspection to look at prompts and responses. We will classify prompts by threat and by intent. Intent is perhaps “write code” or “write a company contract.” It’s vital as a result of we then allow you to write intent-based coverage controls.
What position does AI coverage enforcement play in guaranteeing company AI compliance, and the way does WitnessAI streamline this course of?
Compliance means guaranteeing that your organization is following rules or insurance policies, and there are two components to making sure compliance. The primary is that you need to be capable of determine problematic exercise. For instance, I must know that an worker is utilizing buyer information in a method which may run afoul of an information safety legislation. We do this with our observability platform. The second half is describing and implementing coverage in opposition to that exercise. You don’t need to merely know that buyer information is leaking, you need to cease it from leaking. So, we we have constructed a singular AI-specific coverage engine, Witness/CONTROL, that permits you to simply construct id and intention-based insurance policies to guard information, stop dangerous or unlawful responses, and many others. For instance, you possibly can construct a coverage that claims one thing like, “Solely our authorized division can use ChatGPT to put in writing company contracts, and in the event that they accomplish that, robotically redact any PII.” Simple to say, and with WitnessAI, simple to implement.
How does WitnessAI deal with considerations round LLM jailbreaks and immediate injection assaults?
Now we have a hardcore AI analysis group—actually sharp. Early on, they constructed a system to create artificial assault information, along with pulling in extensively accessible coaching information units. In consequence, we’ve benchmarked our immediate injection in opposition to every thing on the market, we’re over 99% efficient and commonly catch assaults that the fashions themselves miss.
In apply, most corporations we converse with need to begin with worker app governance, after which a bit later they roll out an AI buyer app primarily based on their inner information. So, they use Witness to guard their folks, then they activate the immediate injection firewall. One system, one constant method to construct insurance policies, simple to scale.
What are your long-term objectives for WitnessAI, and the place do you see AI governance evolving within the subsequent 5 years?
Up to now, we’ve solely talked a few person-to-chat app mannequin right here. Our subsequent part shall be to deal with app to app, i.e agentic AI. We’ve designed the APIs in our platform to work equally nicely with each brokers and people. Past that, we consider we’ve constructed a brand new method to get network-level visibility and coverage management within the AI age, and we’ll be rising the corporate with that in thoughts.
Thanks for the nice interview, readers who want to be taught extra ought to go to WitnessAI.
