TLDR: Exabeam has appointed Pete Harteveld as its new CEO, tasking him with spearheading the integration of AI agents into SIEM solutions to address AI-generated risks and enhance security operations. The company aims to minimize tool sprawl and deliver defined security outcomes by leveraging AI within its New-Scale Security Operations Platform, including monitoring internal AI usage to inform product development.
Exabeam, a prominent Silicon Valley security operations vendor, has announced the promotion of Pete Harteveld to Chief Executive Officer, effective October 10, 2025. Harteveld, who joined Exabeam in April 2024 as Chief Revenue Officer to oversee the integration between LogRhythm and Exabeam, succeeds Christopher O’Malley, who led the company since February 2022. His new mandate focuses on addressing the burgeoning risks associated with AI agents and leveraging artificial intelligence to significantly enhance security operations.
Harteveld’s roadmap for Exabeam emphasizes three core pillars: securing AI agents, minimizing tool sprawl, and promoting defined security outcomes. This strategic direction builds upon the company’s recent successes, including the integration of Google’s Agentspace and Model Armor into its New-Scale Security Operations Platform, announced in September 2025. This integration allows Exabeam Nova, the company’s intelligence layer, to operationalize telemetry from these Google tools, providing security teams with enhanced visibility and control over autonomous AI agents within their environments.
According to Harteveld, Exabeam has already begun integrating AI agents into its internal workflows to gain a deeper understanding of their behavior. The company collaborates with its CISO to monitor internal AI usage in real-time, using this practical experience to shape its external product offerings. ‘We use our technology to manage and monitor all of those AI agents that are proliferating around our organization as a means to understand that behavior and understand those challenges,’ Harteveld stated. ‘We’re able to treat those like any other insider threat, and could basically give SOC teams the ability to see those issues before many others could identify them.’
The move comes at a critical juncture for cybersecurity, as AI agents are rapidly transforming business operations. Exabeam Chief AI Officer Steve Wilson highlighted the dual nature of AI agents, noting their potential for boosting productivity and efficiency, but also the significant security risks they pose. Wilson emphasized that traditional SIEM and XDR solutions often lack the intelligence to detect when AI agents ‘go rogue’ because they cannot baseline and learn normal AI behavior.
A recent Exabeam survey of over 1,000 cybersecurity professionals underscored these concerns, revealing that 93% of organizations have either experienced or anticipate a rise in AI-driven insider threats. Furthermore, 76% reported unauthorized use of generative AI by employees, with AI-enhanced phishing/social engineering and unauthorized AI use identified as top insider threat vectors.
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Exabeam Nova is central to this new strategy, providing explainable, prioritized threat insights by analyzing the intent and execution patterns of AI agents in real time. This capability allows analysts to move beyond surface-level alerts, understanding the context behind agent actions to differentiate between legitimate automation and potential misuse. By unifying visibility across both human and AI-driven activity, Exabeam aims to empower security teams to detect, assess, and respond to insider threats comprehensively, ensuring organizations can confidently adopt AI technologies while maintaining control and integrity.
