Delinea names Alex Thurber to lead global channel expansion
Delinea has appointed Alex Thurber as Senior Vice President of Global Channels to support the company's partner and channel ecosystem strategy.
The new leadership appointment brings Thurber's 25 years of experience in sales, channel strategy, and customer success to Delinea's efforts to expand its network of partners worldwide. During his career, Thurber has held senior roles at technology firms including Riverbed Technology, Cisco, McAfee, Pulse Secure, WatchGuard, and BlackBerry.
Chris Kelly, President of Delinea, commented on the significance of Thurber's appointment for the company's growth and evolving technology strategy. "Alex's arrival comes at a crucial time as we focus on building partnerships and expanding our client base to fuel Delinea's next phase of growth," said Kelly. "His proven track record in channel strategy and strategic alliances fits perfectly with where we are headed. With AI playing an increasing role in how organisations defend against identity-based threats, Alex's deep expertise will be instrumental in further elevating our partner network to deliver seamless identity security."
At Riverbed Technology, Thurber led a variety of go-to-market strategies that contributed to transformation and measurable success. In previous positions, he oversaw global channel sales at Cisco and McAfee, with additional executive leadership appointments at security-focused firms such as Pulse Secure, WatchGuard, and BlackBerry. His positions have emphasised partnership building and the implementation of global channel initiatives.
Thurber shared his perspective on joining Delinea at a time when identity security is a growing priority for organisations. "I'm incredibly excited to join Delinea and become part of a team that is deeply dedicated to the success of its partners and customers at a time when identity security is growing in importance," said Thurber. "Delinea's commitment to innovation and its strong emphasis on cultivating channel relationships were key factors that drew me in, and I'm eager to contribute to driving the business toward continued success."
Delinea has recently advanced its machine learning and AI portfolio, launching new capabilities intended to help partners and their clients safeguard AI applications while maintaining compliance and organisational productivity. The company states that its strategic focus includes the secure integration of AI for clients and partners and aims to provide tools that organisations need to reduce the threat posed by compromised identities.
The appointment of Thurber is part of Delinea's response to what it describes as the increasing impact of AI on identity security. The company's current strategy is focused both on growing its global channel partner base and on delivering technology designed to provide adaptive, centralised authorisation for both human and machine identities across multiple infrastructures.
Follow us on:
Share on:
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Techday NZ
2 hours ago
- Techday NZ
Lenovo expands Hybrid AI Advantage for enterprise adoption
Lenovo has announced the expansion of Hybrid AI Advantage, introducing new services, industry-specific solutions and collaborative platforms to support enterprise adoption and deployment of artificial intelligence technologies. The initiative offers a combination of advisory, implementation, and change management services as well as hybrid AI infrastructure backed by partnerships with Cisco, IBM and NVIDIA. Lenovo aims to provide enterprises with the resources needed to build and operate AI capabilities across a variety of environments, including cloud, edge, and on-premise. Lenovo's Global CIO Playbook highlights ongoing challenges among businesses investing in AI, with two-thirds not yet seeing a return on investment, struggling particularly with scaling, training, and modernising their infrastructure. As AI spending is projected to reach almost 20% of IT budgets in 2025, Lenovo has positioned its expanded Hybrid AI Advantage to address these gaps. Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, President, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Lenovo, said: "Lenovo is leading hybrid AI with groundbreaking advancements in integrated solutions that are driving industry-wide innovation and making enterprise-level AI attainable for every business. With these solutions and trusted partnerships, Lenovo is turning AI into reality with use cases and services that have been tested and proven to drive measurable productivity gains, boost satisfaction, and unlock data for real business value faster." Alongside its billion-dollar investment in accelerating enterprise AI adoption, Lenovo has recorded a year-over-year increase of nearly 40% in customer adoptions. The company states that its services allow businesses to activate AI across their workforces and operations while documented frameworks for generative AI could lead to a reported 31% increase in time saved per week. AI-enabling services AI Adoption and Change Management Services form a core part of the expansion, with features such as AI People Readiness Assessment, persona-based training, Copilot integration, and governance support. Lenovo claims these services are designed to ready organisations for AI transformation by focusing on workforce upskilling, engagement, and onboarding of generative AI tools. Ken Wong, Executive Vice President and President, Solutions and Services Group, Lenovo, commented: "AI adoption demands a clear strategy, trusted expertise, and the right technology mix that can accelerate time to value. With the Lenovo Hybrid AI Advantage, we are helping customers turn AI potential into real performance gains, enabling every part of the organisation to work smarter, faster, and with greater confidence." Lenovo cited examples of deploying its advisory services within sectors such as aviation, healthcare, and manufacturing, highlighting a recent digital workplace transformation for an airline that achieved efficiency gains through tailored programme design and planning over a three-month period. Industry use cases The Hybrid AI Advantage portfolio includes solutions targeted at manufacturing, hospitality, retail, and smart spaces. Examples include collaboration with Centific and NVIDIA for hospitality platforms focused on guest loyalty and operational efficiency, Avathon Visual AI for real-time workplace safety monitoring, and partnerships with WaitTime and Intel for crowd analytics in retail spaces. Additionally, the partnership with Trifork and NVIDIA brings automated quality inspection solutions for the manufacturing sector, using AI-powered insights for defect detection and model retraining on the factory floor. Hybrid platforms and infrastructure The expansion includes new high-performance systems such as the ThinkSystem SR680a V4, equipped with Intel Xeon 6 CPUs and eight NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs interconnected with NVIDIA NVLink technology. The platform is designed to offer up to eleven times faster AI inferencing capabilities on large language models and up to seven times computational capacity compared to previous versions. Other components include the hybrid AI platform with IBM watsonx, which integrates with Lenovo ThinkSystem SR675 servers, and a collaborative platform with Cisco, supported by NVIDIA Spectrum-X technology. The IBM watsonx platform provides validated, ready-to-deploy generative AI infrastructure, while the Cisco collaboration is aimed at boosting network performance for enterprise AI deployments. The Hybrid AI platform with Cisco is built on the ThinkSystem SR675 V3, supporting up to eight NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs, and is intended as a universal data centre system that shifts workloads from CPU-based to GPU-accelerated environments. Lenovo states that regardless of an organisation's stage in its AI journey, these offerings are designed to deliver measurable business outcomes using established infrastructure and frameworks, aiming to support enterprises from initial adoption through to scaling and optimisation.
Techday NZ
2 hours ago
- Techday NZ
Okta launches Cross App Access to boost AI security in firms
Okta has announced Cross App Access, a protocol designed to bring security, visibility, and control to the way AI agents interact with enterprise systems and applications. The protocol, extending the capabilities of OAuth, provides IT teams with oversight over both agent-driven and application-to-application interactions within an organisation. Through Cross App Access, teams can manage which applications are connecting, and the types of information AI agents are permitted to use or access. Security landscape The introduction of Cross App Access comes amid increasing enterprise adoption of AI-powered tools, which often use communication protocols such as Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent2Agent (A2A) to connect learning models to organisational data and applications. In current practice, establishing these connections typically requires users to grant manual consents and login approvals for each integration, such as linking AI tools to platforms like Google Drive or Slack. These processes frequently occur without clear oversight, leaving IT departments to handle access management through inconsistent manual methods. This situation, according to Okta, presents a security vulnerability that expands as the use of AI agents increases, creating what many describe as an unmanaged perimeter with limited visibility into agent and app activities. Arnab Bose, Chief Product Officer, Okta Platform at Okta, described the changing risk landscape as both a technological and security challenge for organisations adopting AI agents at scale. He stated: "While we're actively working with the MCP and A2A communities to improve AI agents' functionality, their increased access to data and the explosion of app-to-app connections will create new identity security challenges. With Cross App Access, Okta is excited to bring oversight and control to how agents interact across the enterprise. Since protocols are only as powerful as the ecosystem that supports them, we're also committed to collaborating across the software industry to help provide agents with secure, standardized access to all apps." Technical approach Cross App Access is aimed at software vendors that support enterprise customers, enabling them to facilitate secure integration between AI tools and other business applications. The protocol is set to become available as a feature for select Okta Platform customers in the third quarter. In the typical workflow described by Okta, an AI tool needing access to an internal communication app would—under existing processes—require the end user to sign in and approve each integration individually. Each instance of authorisation is usually not visible to the IT team, limiting the ability to monitor or control access at the organisational level. With Cross App Access, the workflow changes. The AI tool submits an access request to Okta, which then evaluates the request in line with company policies. If authorised, Okta issues a token to the AI tool, which presents it to the communication app for validation. The process is completed without further user interaction, and all interactions are logged and visible to enterprise IT. Impact for software vendors Independent software vendors (ISVs) are under pressure to create secure and seamless cross-application experiences. The complexities associated with current identity and access flows can lead to risks such as token sprawl and inconsistent user authorisations. These issues are compounded as AI agents increasingly initiate connections across disparate systems autonomously. Okta states that the protocol will address these challenges by shifting access management and control responsibility from individual integrations to centralised identity providers. This could help reduce risks and help ISVs with customer compliance requirements. Use by enterprises Many organisations currently implement AI integrations through patchwork processes that use long-lived tokens and fragmented control systems, which, Okta notes, are inherently risky and often stall further AI adoption. Without an overarching management system, businesses risk losing visibility into how, when, and why AI agents interact with sensitive data. From the end-user's perspective, repeated authorisation requests and outdated login flows can make adopting new AI-powered applications burdensome and inefficient. Cross App Access aims to address these issues by allowing IT administrators to manage agent access centrally, providing both security improvements and more streamlined user experiences. Companies can then integrate new AI applications with existing business systems while meeting requirements for oversight, compliance, and governance.
RNZ News
19 hours ago
- RNZ News
Google search changes turning web into 'wild west'
Google is transforming online search, and businesses wanting to get their websites in front of customers must change with it, according to a leading digital marketer here. The vast majority of searches online are done on Google, and the tech company began incorporating AI into its searches a little over a year ago. Last month its CEO announced a further step where the typical experience of getting links to websites would be gone entirely, replaced with an AI-generated article answering the search question. Auckland digital marketer Richard Conway says he has had to overhaul his business, moving from a focus on search engine optimisation to 'generative engine optimisation'. He says the ongoing changes to Google search are turning the web into something of a 'wild west' for those who operate businesses online. To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following: See terms of use.
