Cequence names Russ Schafer Chief Marketing Officer

Cequence Security has appointed Russ Schafer as Chief Marketing Officer after a record quarter for the cybersecurity company.

Schafer joins from Fortinet, where he served as Executive Vice President of Marketing, and will report to Chief Executive Officer Ameya Talwalkar. He will oversee corporate marketing, product marketing, demand generation, field marketing, analyst relations and creative services.

The appointment comes as Cequence expands its work in application, API and AI agent security. The company recorded its strongest quarter to date, signed the largest deal in its history, and added customers in the United States, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and the Middle East.

Among those wins was NTT DOCOMO, the Japanese mobile operator with more than 91 million subscribers. It is using Cequence's application and API protection tools to protect service infrastructure, applications and APIs against attacks, business logic abuse and unauthorised access.

Schafer brings more than 25 years of marketing experience across cybersecurity, software, semiconductors and media. He has also held senior roles at Check Point Software, THX, Adap.tv, Intel, IBM, Sybase and Yahoo.

Before joining Cequence, he led product marketing and analyst relations at Check Point Software and later served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Technology at THX. At Adap.tv, he was Vice President of Product Marketing before the company was acquired by AOL for USD $405 million.

Cequence said Schafer has managed global teams of more than 200 staff and overseen budgets of more than USD $300 million. The company is looking to build on rising demand for products that manage security risks linked to bots, APIs and AI agents.

AI focus

A central part of that push is Cequence's effort to secure AI agents that access enterprise systems through APIs. Its latest Application and API Protection release includes an AI assistant and an MCP server, while its Agent Trust function is designed to verify agent identity and block harmful behaviour in real time.

Cequence also offers AI Gateway, which is intended to govern how enterprise AI agents access tools, data and models. The product is designed to bring shadow AI under governance and manage model failover and spending controls.

According to Cequence, its application and API protection tools and AI Gateway together cover both inbound and outbound agent traffic. That includes external agents seeking access to enterprise applications and internal enterprise agents connecting to tools, data and large language models.

Cequence has been positioning itself around what it describes as the emerging security needs of the "agentic" AI market. It has also been involved in industry standards work, including co-authoring CIS Critical Security Controls Companion Guides for AI agents, large language models and Model Context Protocol, and co-chairing TM Forum's AI-Native Blueprint initiative.

The company is also working with a dozen global telecommunications providers on autonomous network programmes linked to agentic AI. Its platform processes more than 10 billion API calls a day and protects 4 billion user accounts.

Talwalkar said the company sees a growing need for governance as businesses deploy AI agents more widely across internal systems and external applications.

"Enterprise leaders are just beginning to realise the sheer scale of the AI agent security and governance challenge," said Ameya Talwalkar, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Cequence. "Because AI agents rely on the very APIs Cequence already protects, we are uniquely positioned to give enterprises complete visibility and real-time control and governance of AI agents. Russ brings the strategic vision and proven marketing playbook to drive awareness, build pipeline, and establish Cequence as a leader in agentic AI security."

Schafer said the company is addressing a market many corporate technology teams are only beginning to assess.

"Cequence is solving the exact agentic AI security challenges that enterprise leaders are just beginning to discover," said Russ Schafer, Chief Marketing Officer of Cequence. "Cequence's proven heritage in stopping bot and API abuse, combined with breakthrough innovations like Agent Trust and full-lifecycle AI governance, uniquely positions us to lead this market. I'm thrilled to join the team and empower enterprises to adopt AI agents with complete confidence and control."