MAM
Arjuna Gaur joins Leo Burnett as ECD
MUMBAI: Leo Burnett India has brought on board Arjuna Gaur as the executive creative director. In his new mandate, Gaur will lead the creative function of the North operations.
To be based in New Delhi, Gaur will report to Leo Burnett south Asia CCO RajDeepak Das.
Gaur joins the agency from M&C Saatchi Kuala Lumpur. He has 10 years of experience, including stints at Grey and BBDO India, where he worked with RajDeepak.
Speaking about his move, Gaur said, “Most people I met prior to joining Leo Burnett, spoke with great authority about the future of advertising and how their respective agencies were going to define it. Raj, on the other hand, spoke very fast, and threw a million ideas at me. A million very good ideas.”
Gaur is a passionate and energetic creative professional, with several award-winning campaigns to his name. He has worked across categories and brands, his most well-known work being the ‘I Feel Up’ campaign for 7UP, Quaker Oats’ ‘Make India Heart Healthy’ and ‘Art By The People’ for GE India among many others. He has won multiple awards for his campaigns at Spikes Asia, Effies, The One Show and the Kancils in Malaysia.
Das said, “Gaur is one of those few people who personifies ‘creativity’. We have worked together for 7-8 years at BBDO India, and I love the energy he brings to the table. I love that he is a geek, I love that he understands human behaviour, applies it to his craft, and makes the ad-meet-the-tech-meet-the-idea.”
Brands
Google completes $32 billion Wiz deal to boost AI and cloud security
Wiz joins Google Cloud but keeps multi-cloud support across rival platforms
NEW YORK: Google has completed its $32 billion acquisition of cloud security company Wiz, marking the biggest deal in the tech giant’s history and signalling a major push to strengthen security in the era of artificial intelligence and multi-cloud computing.
The New York-headquartered cybersecurity firm will join Google Cloud while continuing to operate under the Wiz brand. Crucially, the company will maintain support for multiple cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, reflecting the reality that most large organisations run their systems across several cloud providers.
Google said the acquisition is designed to help organisations build and scale applications more securely as businesses and governments increasingly move critical systems and data to the cloud. At the same time, the rapid adoption of generative AI has introduced new cybersecurity risks, with attackers also using AI to launch faster and more sophisticated attacks.
Wiz has built a reputation for simplifying cloud security. Its platform maps entire cloud environments, identifying vulnerabilities, potential attack paths and misconfigurations before they can be exploited. By connecting insights from code, cloud infrastructure and runtime environments, it allows security and engineering teams to detect and fix risks early in the development cycle.
Bringing Wiz into Google Cloud will create what the company describes as a unified security platform capable of detecting, preventing and responding to threats across cloud and AI environments. The combined offering will also integrate Google’s own security capabilities, including threat intelligence tools, security operations platforms and the cybersecurity expertise of Mandiant.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the move reflects the growing importance of security as more organisations rely on AI and cloud technologies. “Keeping people safe online has always been part of Google’s mission,” he said, adding that the partnership will help organisations innovate with greater confidence.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, said the goal is to make security an enabler rather than a roadblock for businesses building modern applications. He noted that the combined technologies will simplify the complex task of protecting hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
For Wiz, the acquisition opens the door to global scale while keeping its core philosophy intact. Co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport said the company remains committed to an open, multi-cloud approach and will continue supporting customers regardless of where their workloads run.
Over the past year, Wiz has expanded its platform to address emerging risks tied to AI applications, including tools that help organisations monitor AI usage, detect AI-specific vulnerabilities and secure AI workloads during runtime.
With Google’s infrastructure, artificial intelligence capabilities and security ecosystem now behind it, Wiz plans to accelerate development of its platform while continuing to serve enterprises, governments and start-ups operating across different cloud environments.
For Google Cloud, the acquisition adds a powerful piece to its security puzzle as competition intensifies among global cloud providers. For customers, it promises a future where building fast in the cloud does not have to come at the expense of staying secure.
