President and CEO
As President and CEO, Sumedh leads the company’s vision, strategic direction and implementation. He joined Qualys in 2003 in engineering and grew within the company, taking various leadership roles focused on helping Qualys deliver on its platform vision. From 2014 to 2021, he served as Qualys’ Chief Product Officer, where he oversaw all things product, including engineering, development, product management, cloud operations, DevOps, and customer support. A product fanatic and engineer at heart, he is a driving force behind expanding the platform from Vulnerability Management into broader areas of security and compliance, helping customers consolidate their security stack. This includes the rollout of the game-changing VMDR (Vulnerability Management, Detection and Response) that continually detects and prevents risk to their systems, Multi-Vector EDR, which focuses on protecting endpoints as well as Container Security, Compliance and Web Application Security solutions. Sumedh was also instrumental in the build-up of multiple Qualys sites resulting in a global 24×7 follow-the-sun product team.
Sr. Vice President, Product Management
As Senior Vice President of Product Management, Shailesh leads the product management team and drives the Qualys product vision helping customers assess and improve their IT, security and compliance posture. Since joining Qualys in 2012, he has worked in various security and compliance roles driving innovative solutions, including remote endpoint protection, endpoint detection and response, and SaaS security. In addition, Shailesh headed engineering, research and product management for Qualys Policy Compliance and File Integrity Monitoring, where he helped customers go beyond compliance to drive their IT GRC objectives. Before Qualys, he focused on security research for Symantec ESM and Compliance solutions. Shailesh holds a master’s in computer applications (MCA) from the Vishwakarma Institute of Technology and has various security certifications including CISA, CRISC, CISM. He is also a regular speaker at industry conferences.
Executive Cybersecurity and Crisis Leader
Sarah Armstrong-Smith is a leading authority on cyber resilience and crisis management. As Microsoft’s Chief Security Advisor for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, she advises governments and global enterprises on how to prepare for, respond to, and recover from serious cyber incidents. Her work focuses on embedding resilience into digital transformation and helping organisations navigate the complex intersection of risk, regulation and innovation.
With over 25 years of experience, Sarah has held senior positions in both the private and public sectors. At Fujitsu, she led Continuity and Resilience, while at the London Stock Exchange Group she was Head of Business Resilience and Crisis Management. She began her career addressing large-scale events such as the Millennium Bug, laying the foundation for her expertise in managing disruption at scale.
Sarah is the bestselling author of Understand the Cyber Attacker Mindset (2024) and Effective Crisis Management (2022), and a Fellow of the British Computer Society. Recognised as one of the Top 30 Female Cybersecurity Leaders by SC Media in 2024, she is a vocal advocate for diversity in tech and a trusted voice in board-level cyber strategy.
Known for her clarity and accessibility, Sarah translates technical risk into practical, actionable guidance. On stage, she combines real-world case studies with forward-looking insights into evolving threats such as AI, deepfakes and the future of cybercrime. She equips audiences with the tools to lead confidently through uncertainty and build cultures of resilience.
Head of Cert
Now serving as Kering Head of CERT. Created and continuously improved the group’s global incident response capability over the last 4 years—covering SOC, CSIRT, VOC, and CTI for 15 Houses and 47,000 employees across 75 countries—achieving TF-CSIRT certification and SIM3 maturity level. Over 15 years’ experience from energy sector (CEA, EDF) to luxury retail, spanning full security stack: SOC tooling, management, and luxury-specific threats.
French cybersecurity community contributions include authoring *Cybersecurity & PowerShell* (ENI), 8 MISC magazine articles, EPITA engineering school instruction, and podcast appearances. Passionate mountaineer; graduated from the regional alpinism team in 2019.
VP, Cyber Risk
As the Chief Risk Technology Officer at Qualys, Richard helps customers and the broader security community measure, communicate, and eliminate risk. With over 10 years of experience as a CISO, he’s led and supported security strategy, operations, and governance across critical infrastructure and cloud-native organizations. Richard has published two books, “How To Measure Anything In Cybersecurity Risk” and “The Metrics Manifesto: Confronting Security With Data.” Each provides practical and innovative approaches to quantifying and reducing security risk. His first book is the main curriculum at the US Dept of Defense (DoD) CISO program at Carnegie Mellon University and numerous other institutions of higher education.
