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VentureBeat recently sat down (virtually) with Jerry R. Geisler III, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at Walmart Inc., to gain insights into the cybersecurity challenges the world’s largest retailer faces as AI becomes increasingly autonomous.
We talked about securing agentic AI systems, modernizing identity management and the critical lessons learned from building Element AI, Walmart’s centralized AI platform. Geisler provided a refreshingly candid view of how the company is tackling unprecedented security challenges, from defending against AI-enhanced cyber threats to managing security across a massive hybrid multi-cloud infrastructure. His startup mindset approach to rebuilding identity and access management systems offers valuable lessons for enterprises of all sizes.
Leading security for a company operating at Walmart’s scale across Google Cloud, Azure and private cloud environments, Geisler brings unique insights into implementing Zero Trust architectures and building what he calls “velocity with governance,” enabling rapid AI innovation within a trusted security framework. The architectural decisions made while developing Element AI have shaped Walmart’s entire approach to centralizing emerging AI technologies.
Jerry R. Geisler III, Senior VP and Chief Information Security Officer, Walmart
Credit: Walmart
Presented below are excerpts from our interview:
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VentureBeat: As generative and agentic AI become increasingly autonomous, how will your existing governance and security guardrails evolve to address emerging threats and unintended model behaviors?
Jerry R. Geisler III: The adoption of agentic AI introduces entirely new security threats that bypass traditional controls. These risks span data exfiltration, autonomous misuse of APIs, and covert cross-agent collusion, all of which could disrupt enterprise operations or violate regulatory mandates. Our strategy is to build robust, proactive security controls using advanced AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM), ensuring continuous risk monitoring, data protection, regulatory compliance and operational trust.
VB: Given the limitations of traditional RBAC in dynamic AI settings, how is Walmart refining its identity management and Zero Trust architectures to provide granular, context-sensitive data access?
Geisler: An environment of our size requires a tailor-made approach, and interestingly enough, a startup mindset. Our team often takes a step back and asks, “If we were a new company and building from ground zero, what would we build?” Identity & access management (IAM) has gone through many iterations over the past 30+ years, and our mai …