Q&A with Lisa Citron: What does the CalypsoAI acquisition mean for F5 partners

Citron: Absolutely. This acquisition equips F5's partners with powerful, new capabilities to tackle customers' most urgent cybersecurity needs, particularly in the rapidly evolving AI space. As organizations embrace AI, they're encountering critical challenges, from the explosion of APIs to the risks that arise from models accessing vulnerable data stores. These dynamic and expanding attack surfaces require advanced security solutions, and this is where the integration of CalypsoAI makes a difference.

With CalypsoAI, partners can create tailored solutions to address critical AI risks. For example, they can deploy guardrails that ensure models behave responsibly by preventing sensitive data disclosures or unwanted outputs. Imagine a cosmetics company that uses AI chatbots. They can set guardrails so their bots never offer medical advice. Or a financial services company can make sure AI tools avoid offering regulated financial advice. The key point here is just because a model has access to certain data doesn't mean it should use it, and guardrails help ensure that.

With CalypsoAI, partners can also stay ahead of external threats like prompt injection and jailbreak attacks by offering proactive risk assessment services. Using adversarial attack simulation backed by the preeminent AI threat library, generating over 10,000 attack prompts per month, partners can deliver detailed insights for identifying vulnerabilities in real time.

Furthermore, partners can help customers meet compliance requirements, such as the EU AI Act and GDPR, by providing unified governance solutions. Capabilities like dashboards, risk scoring, and audit trails that reveal chain-of-thought help to expose the so-called AI black box and streamline the path to AI compliance through operational transparency. With features like Agentic Fingerprints and Outcome Analysis, CalypsoAI is at the forefront of explainability, helping customers understand why an AI system made a particular decision or took a particular action.

Operational resilience is another area where partners can step in. Through continuous vulnerability assessments, scheduled retesting, and prioritized remediation, they can help customers avoid issues such as crashes or latency. By integrating threat intelligence findings into workflows, partners can deliver comprehensive solutions to secure operations and enhance overall performance.

Ultimately, this acquisition empowers F5's partners to lead in the AI security market, while creating innovative programs that drive differentiation, growth, and long-term success.