Google Cloud Security Exec Sunil Potti To Depart

Potti, who hasn’t yet disclosed his next move, has served as general manager for Google Cloud’s security business since 2019.

Sunil Potti, the general manager of Google Cloud’s security business for more than half a decade, will depart the company in March, according to a LinkedIn post from Potti.

He did not disclose his next move in the post. CRN has reached out to Google Cloud for comment.

Potti, who also holds the title of vice president at Google Cloud, has been a top leader for cybersecurity at the company since joining in 2019. Previously, he had spent four years as chief product and development officer at Nutanix.

“As some of you know, I am leaving Google in March after almost 6 years of my most fulfilling work experience,” Potti wrote in the LinkedIn post.

“After a very high bar at Nutanix, I had not expected to have another experience that would be so meaningful,” he wrote — adding, “more about my next steps in another post.”

Potti has been involved with major product launches at Google Cloud including the debut of Chronicle Security Operations (now known as Google Security Operations) in 2022 as well as GenAI-powered security offerings starting in 2023.

“The way we’ve approached AI — in particular inside security —is to not look at it as a chatbot that is overlaid on our products,” Potti said during a briefing with reporters in 2023. “The core thing we’re trying to do is to infuse AI into every workflow in our security tooling, so that we can get that power of generative AI to be a force multiplier across all things security.”

Recent years have also seen Google Cloud make a string of acquisitions in security, most notably its $5.4 billion acquisition of incident response and threat intelligence powerhouse Mandiant in 2022. Other major acquisitions included the $500 million deal for Siemplify, a security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) provider, in 2022.

In October 2024, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said during a call with analysts that the company’s aggressive investments into enabling the adoption of AI infrastructure and GenAI capabilities are paying off as the tech giant is finding “real momentum” in the emerging area.

Without a doubt, Google’s “long-term focus on investment in AI are paying off and driving success for the company and for our customers,” particularly when it comes to the Google Cloud business, Pichai said during the call.

In 2022, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian told CRN that Google Cloud is seeking to dramatically reduce the complexity — and the resulting security risk — associated with modern cybersecurity.

“What we are trying to do is take cybersecurity and industrialize it so that people don’t have to always live with this worry, ‘Is tomorrow the day I get told that my systems have been breached?’” Kurian said during the interview.