Upwind Taps Industry Trailblazer Rinki Sethi as CSO to Accelerate Runtime-First Cloud Security Movement

In a bold move that signals the shifting tectonics of cloud security, Upwind has appointed cybersecurity veteran Rinki Sethi as its new Chief Security Officer. The hire isn’t just a high-profile get—it’s a calculated escalation in Upwind’s mission to upend the stale paradigms of cloud-native security.

Sethi, one of the most influential CISOs in the modern enterprise world, joins Upwind after an explosive year for the company—4,000% revenue growth, a 40% surge in customers, and over 30 product updates in just the first quarter of 2025. That kind of trajectory has turned Upwind from a niche runtime security player into a direct challenger to legacy CNAPP giants.

“Rinki is one of the most respected CISOs in the world, and her decision to join Upwind is a major signal of where the future of cloud security is headed,” said Amiram Shachar, CEO and co-founder of Upwind. “She was one of the first to recognize that runtime context transforms how we secure the cloud.”

Sethi’s resume is stacked: Twitter, Walmart, IBM, Palo Alto Networks, Rubrik, eBay/PayPal. She’s served on the boards of ForgeRock and Vaultree and is a founding partner at Lockstep Ventures, backing startups that are pushing boundaries in cybersecurity. Now she’s stepping directly into a C-suite role at a company she once selected as a customer.

That’s right—Sethi isn’t just joining the runtime-first revolution; she’s lived it. “As a CISO, I lived the pain of chasing dashboards while incidents unfolded in real-time,” she said. “Upwind is the first platform I’ve seen that flips the model, from reactive noise to real-time decisions.”

The model she’s referring to is the outdated patchwork of siloed cloud security tools. Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) here, Cloud Workload Protection (CWPP) there, identity security bolted on like an afterthought. The result: too many alerts, not enough action. Upwind takes a different approach—melding agentless visibility and eBPF-powered runtime detection into a single CNAPP that sees cloud environments not as static infrastructure but as living, breathing systems.

By grounding vulnerability management, detection, and response in live runtime data, Upwind helps teams shrink their response windows and cut through alert fatigue. Some customers report up to 95% fewer false positives and drastically accelerated remediation timelines.

Sethi's appointment comes at a time when CISOs are desperate for solutions that don’t just add noise but cut through it. She brings not only deep technical fluency but also a rare dual perspective—from both the trenches of enterprise security and the strategic perch of boardrooms and VCs.

In her own words: “That’s why I’m joining Upwind, to help build the future I always wanted as a practitioner.”

As the cloud grows more complex, adversaries more agile, and SOC teams more strained, the industry doesn’t need another dashboard—it needs a paradigm shift. And with Sethi helping steer the ship, Upwind is betting it can deliver just that.