RiskProfiler was built to simplify how organisations understand and control their external cyber exposure. Setu Parimi, Co-Founder & CTO, RiskProfiler, speaks to Bhavya Bagga, Business Reporter – Enterprise & Corporate, CXO Media and APAC Media, about how RiskProfiler is built on an AI-first exposure management architecture that uses automation to deliver scale, context and accuracy.
How does RiskProfiler bring together multiple aspects like attack surface management, third-party risk, and brand monitoring under one platform?
At its core, RiskProfiler was built to simplify how organisations understand and control their external cyber exposure. Most enterprises today rely on disjointed tools for attack surface discovery, vendor risk assessments, dark web monitoring, and brand protection. This creates fragmentation that brings forth operational blind spots and slows down response.
RiskProfiler consolidates these capabilities so that security teams have line-of-sight to every external risk dimension in a single platform across infrastructure, supply chain, digital identity, and brand reputation. This integrated view allows teams to move from reactive firefighting to proactive exposure reduction, significantly improving cyber hygiene and overall resilience.
What gaps in traditional cybersecurity approaches inspired you to build a unified threat exposure management solution?
Traditional cybersecurity has been heavily perimeter-centric, assuming clear network boundaries and predictable user behaviour. But today, enterprises operate in a hyper-connected ecosystem; cloud workloads, SaaS tools, distributed teams, and external vendors all expand the digital footprint far beyond the firewall.
What we observed is:
Tool sprawl: Large organisations use 50+ security tools on average, yet still miss basic exposures.
Siloed risk views: Attack surface management, third-party assessment, brand monitoring, and threat intelligence operate independently because of limited context.
Slow remediation: Teams often take weeks to find and validate exposures, giving an upper hand to the attackers.
These gaps led us to build a platform that provides continuous and consolidated visibility into risk so security teams can detect, prioritise, and remediate exposures before they are weaponised.
AI and automation are transforming how organisations detect and respond to threats. How is RiskProfiler leveraging these technologies to enhance real-time visibility and accelerate threat mitigation?
RiskProfiler is built on an AI-first exposure management architecture that uses automation to deliver scale, context, and accuracy. Our AI-driven discovery continuously maps an organisation’s external footprint, including traditional assets as well as AI-facing exposures such as unsecured AI APIs, exposed inference endpoints, leaked model keys, and shadow AI services.
As enterprises rapidly adopt GenAI, this visibility is critical to preventing data leakage and unintended model abuse. We apply machine learning to correlate exposures with exploit intelligence, asset criticality, and attacker behaviour, typically reducing non-actionable alerts by 60–70%. RiskProfiler also identifies AI-driven abuse patterns such as executive impersonation, fake profiles, and automated brand misuse campaigns.
Automated workflows and remediation guidance help security teams respond faster, often reducing remediation timelines from weeks to days. Ultimately, AI enables RiskProfiler to help organisations stay ahead of emerging attack techniques rather than react after damage occurs.
Given your experience across global enterprises, how have you seen the external threat landscape evolve—particularly in the context of hybrid work, cloud expansion, and the rise of sophisticated adversaries?
The threat landscape has changed in three major ways:
Explosion of cloud and SaaS:
In fact, over 70% of enterprise workloads now reside in the cloud, which has extended the attack surface and laid bare countless misconfigurations and unknown assets.
Hybrid work vulnerabilities:
Remote workers constantly rely on unmanaged devices, home networks, and third-party applications, which form easy entry points for attacks.
The rise of highly sophisticated adversaries:
Ransomware-as-a-service, AI-enabled phishing, supply-chain attacks, and deepfake-based social engineering have grown sharply. Industry reports suggest that 40% of the breaches involved external vendors or partners, and the average cost of a breach crossed more than $4.45 million globally in 2024.
In other words, security teams have to move from internal defence to external visibility, as adversaries continue to target the weakest link.
Supply-chain and third-party risks have become major attack vectors in recent years. What proactive steps can enterprises take to better manage and monitor their extended digital ecosystems?
Enterprises require a far more dynamic and ongoing process than one-time annual questionnaires or point-in-time audits. This proactive approach should entail:
- Continuous external monitoring of the attack surface and security posture for vendors.
- Risk-based categorisation of vendors based on access level, data sensitivity, and business criticality.
- Web-based assessments that replace manual spreadsheets and provide real-time updates.
- Shared visibility into and accountability for remediation workflows, with enterprises and vendors working jointly.
- Mapping of fourth-party dependencies, which are often overlooked but commonly exploited.
Modern supply chains are too complex for static controls; enterprises need real-time visibility into how vendor risks evolve.
India is increasingly being recognised as a hub for cybersecurity innovation. How do you see Indian startups and security professionals contributing to the global security ecosystem, and what opportunities lie ahead?
India has emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing cybersecurity talent pools, comprising an estimated 3.5–4 million professionals involved in product development, SOC operations, threat intelligence, and cloud security.
Three shifts are outstanding:
Deep Product Innovation:
Indian startups are constructing world-competitive platforms in threat detection, cloud security, identity, and AI-driven risk management.
Global Exposure:
Most of the Indian cybersecurity leaders have worked in Fortune 500 environments, where they develop solutions based on their expertise to meet global standards.
Policy and ecosystem support:
The growing digital economy in India, fast adoption of cloud, and startup-friendly regulation make it a fertile ground for cybersecurity innovation.
Going forward, India has all the ingredients to emerge not only as a talent hub but a true global innovation hub, particularly around AI-driven security, threat intelligence, and exposure management platforms.
