Code is no longer just written — it’s evolving. As artificial intelligence takes a central role in building, testing and deploying modern software, AI security is quickly becoming the foundation for digital trust. The more machines help create the systems that power our world, the more vital it becomes to secure them from the inside out.

This new reality is forcing organizations to rethink how software is designed and defended. Intelligent coding assistants and agentic systems are accelerating development, but they’re also introducing unseen risks that traditional safeguards can’t keep up with. To keep innovation moving without compromise, enterprises are now racing to weave security directly into the creative process — ensuring that what AI builds, it can also protect, according to Peter McKay (pictured, left), chief executive officer of Snyk Ltd.

Snyk’s Peter McKay talks about how AI security is becoming essential to innovation.

“We’ve always been very focused on trying to help the developer community learn more about developing more secure code,” McKay said. “When we started to see all these different AI events happening all over the world, when we went to look for where the AI security events were, there weren’t any. Everybody is trying to move faster and faster around AI, but nobody’s thinking about the security aspect of it and there’s no forum for people to go to actually learn about it.”

McKay and Manoj Nair (right), chief innovation officer of Snyk, spoke with theCUBE’s Jackie McGuire at The AI Security Summit, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how AI security is becoming essential to innovation, with Snyk leading efforts to embed protection, education and collaboration into AI development. (* Disclosure below.)

Building the future of AI security through collaboration

Snyk’s leadership believes that the industry can’t afford to separate innovation from protection. The company’s strategy is centered on blending the speed of AI-driven development with the discipline of embedded security — a vision shared by the broader community attending the AI Security Summit, McKay noted.

“Our mission was always around develop fast, but stay secure at the same time,” he said. “It’s very much around leverage the benefits you get from AI and the productivity and the enhancements and the autonomous, the agentic tech, all the things you get, but leverage a Snyk to help embed that into the process so you can go fast without having the risk associated with it.”

That balance between speed and safety is also reshaping the education and diversity landscape. Creating new learning tracks and inclusive spaces — from Women in Cyber and AI sessions to hands-on certifications — helps the next generation of developers and leaders build secure AI systems from the ground up, according to Nair.

“We wanted to bring in various perspectives for the leaders in the group,” he said. “We’re trying to make it educational but also invest in growing the entire community to think about how security can be foundational for this wave.”

Snyk’s new AI Trust Platform aims to unify this fragmented space, extending lessons learned from a decade of DevSecOps into the world of AISecOps. The company’s approach emphasizes partnership, agility and co-creation — aligning with customers as they navigate evolving attack surfaces and constant technological change, McKay explained.

“Nobody has all the answers,” he said. “The power is in the partnerships that we have together with our customers and the ecosystem. The more we lean in and collaborate … I think is the way we go and solve this problem faster than if we try to do it on our own.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of The AI Security Summit:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for The AI Security Summit event. Neither Snyk, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE