# Abhay Kulkarni

> Abhay Kulkarni is a cybersecurity engineer, operator, and founder who built large-scale cloud systems at Symantec, helped scale Netskope and Cisco Webex, then co-founded WideField Security to monitor what identities do after authentication. WideField raised an $11.3 million Series A in October 2025 and was acquired by Cisco in July 2026, with its identity and session intelligence slated for Cisco Identity Intelligence and Splunk security products.

- **Role:** CEO and Co-Founder at WideField Security
- **Organizations:** WideField Security, Cisco, Webex, Netskope, Symantec, Norton, VERITAS, Baffle
- **Education:** Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science, University of Pune
- **Known for:** Built and scaled cloud SaaS and security platforms over more than two decades., Led Norton Cloud engineering for infrastructure serving more than 40 million users and managing many petabytes of data., Led engineering at Netskope during the company's early cloud-security growth.

## Career timeline

- **1997-1999** — Worked as a software engineer at Frontier Technologies.
- **1999-2000** — Worked as a lead developer at Leverent Consulting and briefly as a software engineer at Kasenna.
- **2000-2004** — Worked as a staff software engineer at VERITAS.
- **2004-2013** — Held a progression of engineering leadership roles at Symantec, ultimately leading Norton Cloud engineering.
- **2013-2017** — Served as Vice President of Engineering at Netskope.
- **2017-2023** — Led Webex platform engineering and later served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Webex App at Cisco.
- **2018-2025** — Served as an advisor to the board of Baffle.
- **2023** — Co-founded WideField Security with Kartik Kumar and became CEO.
- **2025** — WideField announced an $11.3 million Series A led by Crosspoint Capital, with participation from Engineering Capital.
- **2026** — Cisco announced its intent to acquire WideField on June 18 and completed the acquisition on July 31.

## Achievements

- Built and scaled cloud SaaS and security platforms over more than two decades.
- Led Norton Cloud engineering for infrastructure serving more than 40 million users and managing many petabytes of data.
- Led engineering at Netskope during the company's early cloud-security growth.
- Led Webex platform and app organizations at Cisco, including during the pandemic-scale surge in remote collaboration.
- Co-founded WideField Security in 2023 and raised an $11.3 million Series A in 2025.
- Built WideField through its July 2026 acquisition by Cisco.

## Latest updates

- **2026-07** — Cisco completed its acquisition of WideField Security on July 31; WideField stopped new standalone sales and began integrating capabilities into Cisco Identity Intelligence and Splunk security products.
- **2026-06** — Cisco announced its intent to acquire WideField Security on June 18.
- **2026-06** — Kulkarni appeared on the Brilliance Security Magazine Podcast to discuss identity lifecycle security and AI agents.
- **2026-04** — Kulkarni appeared in Innovate Cybersecurity's Innovator Series to discuss post-authentication identity risk.
- **2025-10** — WideField announced an $11.3 million Series A led by Crosspoint Capital.

## Links

- Website: https://www.widefield.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhaysk/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/abhay-kulkarni
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-26