MAM
FoxyMoron appoints Nakul Dutt as national strategy director
MUMBAI: FoxyMoron has appointed Nakul Dutt as the national strategy director. He will be overlooking the overall integrated brand, media and communication strategy and working towards scaling the growth of the agency. In this new role, Nakul will report to Zoo Media and FoxyMoron co-founder Pratik Gupta and will be working closely with teams across Mumbai, Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru.
Gupta said, “Our vision as a network, and especially with FoxyMoron has moved into a more strategic business focus for our brands, having someone like Nakul has made that transition very smooth. His experience ranges from being at the forefront of strategy at agencies to a human resources stint and also being a brand manager, this well-rounded approach helps him tie-in strategy for us across media, creative, content, and data for our clients. We’re excited to work alongside him as part of our growth journey".
Dutt said, “The conversation in our industry has changed from digital KPIs to actual business impact. The need of the hour is to integrate digital resources into actionable marketing to achieve a holistic and scalable business model that is measurable and impact-driven. FoxyMoron already has an ecosystem, which integrates data, tech, media & content centered around business goals. This combined with our people-centric approach is a birthplace for not only refreshing ideas but to achieve solutions that will set new benchmarks for our industry. I am looking forward to collaborating with the internal teams, client teams, and the entire ecosystem to drive this impact at large.”
Nakul joins the agency, with a decade of experience in marketing and communications having worked in both brands and agencies on digital as well as mainline campaigns. Nakul has worked on result oriented campaign strategies for brands like Nestle, Abbott, ELI Lilly, UNICEF, LAVA, HTC, Brookfield, HERO MotoCorp, Raymond, and several BFSI brands.
Prior to FoxyMoron, Nakul was a senior strategist at iProspect, Dentsu where he was responsible for new business acquisition, media & communication strategy for existing businesses. Nakul has also worked with Hakuhodo India and Lava International as an account director and brand manager respectively. At Lava, the well known mobile handset company, he was responsible for communication strategy for both, the product and brand.
Nakul holds an MBA in communication management from Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication. He has been a part of FoxyMoron for over a year now where he has worked on strategy for accounts like SanDisk & WD, Sharkehan, Manyavar & Mohey, Ampere, Orient Bell Tiles, and Principal Mutual Funds to name a few.
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.
