Key AI Security

CEO and Co-Founder

Technology Association of Oregon

Building economic development for Oregon’s AI startup ecosystem. In this role, I’ve met with elected leaders on Capitol Hill, set strategic priorities for AI, and moderated VC/founder panels.

Co-chair, AI/Data

DoveLewis Veterinary Emergency & Specialty Hospital

2-term Board member. I also Chair the Cybersecurity Committee & am on the Finance Committee.

DoveLewis is a nationally recognized emergency veterinary practice with 200+ employees who have served 750,000+ patients. Vet care is a $38B sector of the $147B pet industry (APPA, 2023).

Board Member

Stealth Startup

Co-Founder

PrivacyCode.ai

As technical co-founder, I led all technical functions: R&D, Product, Security & DevOps/IT.

PrivacyCode was acquired in 2024 https://www.crunchbase.com/acquisition/abaxx-technologies-acquires-privacycode--a8df513a  

PrivacyCode.ai is the next generation of SaaS for privacy engineering & management. The platform uses AI and machine learning (ML) to transform complex privacy policies into consumable tasks for business & technical teams in the enterprise.

President, Co-founder, CTO and CISO

Zen Data Privacy, Inc.

Advisor turned co-founder and head of Product

Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer

Lookout

Director of Product, Cloud Security Engine -- I owned of a portfolio of 4 products -- including iOS/Android static & dynamic analysis engines that power Lookout’s industry-leading cloud security platform. Drove delivery of mobile & cloud security solutions in close partnership w/ Engineering, Machine Learning, Product, Sales and Marketing teams. 

Director of Product, Security Research -- I owned the Threat Intelligence platform that powers threat detection on 200 million Lookout customer devices. Co-author on mobile threat and mobile advanced persistent threats (APT) research and discoveries.

Product Lead, Security Intelligence

Dastra Advisors, LLC

Founded a security/privacy consultancy to guide clients on strategies to securely create value from data. Built product and cloud strategic plans, product development guidance and advisory.

Clients spanned Health IT, event management, mobile and cloud.

Managing Director

Workday

Created, structured and led Information Security & Risk Management team in a rapidly-growing cloud service provider. 

•	Built Infosec & Risk Management function from the ground-up. 
•	Created and executed on roadmaps to mature the program. 
•	Assessed enterprise security risk for the Board and C-suite.
•	Ensured Infosec controls in support of audit frameworks, e.g., SOC1, SOC2, ISO 27001, PCI.
•	Wrote security checklists, reframed security awareness strategy, and oversaw revamping of RBAC/identity frameworks and vendor security.

Director, Information Security and Risk Management

McKesson

Helped to shape and advance McKesson’s strategy around information uses and protection. 

•	Led enterprise projects and managed a team in the expansion of the global privacy program.
•	Provided thought leadership to c-suite to further develop strategic direction and externally to support policy positions. 
•	Operational lead for a privacy maturity model and 5-year strategic plan. 
•	Built enterprise-wide Privacy by Design (PbD) and data strategy initiatives.

Senior Director, Privacy Innovation

Dynamic leader in cybersecurity, cloud computing, privacy and applied AI. Entrepreneur, patent holder, and execution-oriented tech executive. 

CEO and co-founder of Key AI, the early-stage startup - watch this space! 

Previous: Technical co-founder and CISO of PrivacyCode.ai (exited 2024), where I led R&D to build an enterprise cloud platform for privacy engineering. Extensive experience leading global security, privacy, and product teams through high growth periods at Lookout, Oracle, McKesson, and Workday. Key part of the Lookout research team that discovered state-sponsored threat actors and responsibly disclosed to the major platform vendors. Selected as Finalists for 2017 Cybersecurity Excellence Awards, and named a Cybersecurity DIVA - the most influential women in cybersecurity. 

Dynamically building the future for Cybersecurity and Privacy industries:

•	Co-founder of technology startups; board member and technical advisor 

•	Built 5 innovative, global cybersecurity + privacy teams at enterprises, led teams to >10x growth

•	Completed a Master of Information and Cybersecurity at UC Berkeley School of Information

•	Delivered 40+ security and privacy product solutions, increasing revenue by 100%+ growth YOY

•	Led Product for mobile threat intelligence serving 200M+ users 

•	Co-inventor of 4 patents in database security, forensics and privacy engineering

•	Lead team member in discovery, mitigation and responsible disclosure of state sponsored threats 


Career Impact:

•	Invited as a thought leader to guide public policy discussions with government policymakers in the US, EU and Africa, influencing legislation including GDPR and US state law

•	Managed over $3.5 billion in risk, and reported to c-suites on cyber risk and quantification of risk 

•	Speaker at RSA, IAPP, Oracle Open World, The Rise of Privacy Tech, Day of Shecurity (keynote) 

Languages: Python, C, SQL, Apache Lucene
Tools and Platforms: AWS, Azure, Elasticsearch/ELK, Oracle RDBMS, Burpsuite, Wireshark

Areas of expertise: AI and cloud security, mobile security, privacy engineering, threat intelligence, applied AI/ML (for security, privacy engineering and SAST/DAST), network encryption, IAM, and database security.

Wild timing.

A post about an attack on McKinsey’s AI deployment dropped the day after I talked about this exact type of risk to enterprise data at #InceptionStudio    #DemoDay (which was amazing!)

The biggest AI security risk isn't the model. It's what the model can access.

In this case, it was:
“728,000 files – 192,000 PDFs. 93,000 Excel spreadsheets. 93,000 PowerPoint decks. 58,000 Word documents.” 

When AI agents & copilots can access so much enterprise data, it makes them super useful. But it also increases security risk massively.

More detail will emerge, but they exploited plain vanilla security flaws (unauthenticated endpoints, exposed APIs, SQL injection, etc). But AI changed the blast radius. The researchers reportedly compromised McKinsey’s internal AI platform and accessed thousands of internal docs and AI chats about clients, financials, M&A, and more. 

This is why companies deploy Key AI Security. Not to secure the model, but to secure what the model can access.

Thanks to the awesome researcher Arezou Hosseinzad-Amirkhizi for the heads-up while I was flying home! 

https://lnkd.in/gwviiEXQ

Kristy Edwards

Startup CEO. Previous tech co-founder, CISO, head of product. Cybersecurity, privacy & applied AI.

Open article: How We Hacked McKinsey's AI Platform by codewall.ai

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