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The former Rapid7, Avast and KPN security chief will help shape a platform intended for governments and businesses that need control over sensitive data.
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Cohere’s first CISO appointment puts a veteran security operator inside its effort to offer AI systems customers can deploy in their own environments and govern themselves. Jaya Baloo brings security leadership experience from Rapid7, Avast and KPN Telecom, alongside AISLE’s focus on taking vulnerability discovery through validation and repair. Cohere’s platform strategy pairs models and agent applications with deployment infrastructure and cybersecurity; whether that combination meets the stringent requirements of critical and regulated customers will be a key test.
Cohere announced Baloo’s appointment on November 12, 2026, making her its first chief information security officer.
Cohere says AISLE found more than 500 previously unknown vulnerabilities across more than 100 codebases in its first year out of stealth; these are company-supplied figures.
AISLE’s approach includes validating vulnerabilities and helping repair software already in production, not just identifying potential flaws.
On November 12, 2026, it named AISLE co-founder Jaya Baloo as its first chief information security officer. She will help shape security strategy as the company builds AI systems intended to operate under customers’ control.
The appointment addresses a problem Cohere identifies as organizations move AI from experiments into daily operations. Governments, critical infrastructure operators and highly regulated businesses need more than capable models, the company says. They also need systems that meet strict security requirements, work within their own environments and remain under their control.
That is the practical aim behind Cohere’s “sovereign AI” platform: letting organizations run AI wherever their data lives while retaining security, governance and control. Cohere describes the platform it is building as a combination of advanced models, applications built around AI agents, secure deployment infrastructure and cybersecurity capabilities.
Baloo brings more than two decades of cybersecurity experience, according to Cohere. Before co-founding AISLE, she served as chief information security officer at Rapid7, Avast and KPN Telecom. Those roles put a career in security leadership behind the new appointment, rather than experience limited to developing AI products.
Her advisory work has included the World Economic Forum and Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre. Cohere says her experience spans keeping systems resilient against cyber threats, protecting critical infrastructure, managing software vulnerabilities and preparing for quantum computing. The company links those areas to AI agents becoming more capable and more deeply embedded in essential services.
Most recently, Baloo co-founded AISLE with Ondrej Vlcek and Stanislav Fort. The cybersecurity company was built around a gap between finding software weaknesses and fixing them. As Cohere describes the problem, organizations can identify vulnerabilities but still struggle to repair them quickly enough to stay ahead of attackers.
AISLE developed autonomous AI systems to discover previously unknown vulnerabilities, validate them and help repair software already in production. That sequence extends beyond flagging a possible flaw: validation and assistance with repairs are also part of its stated approach. Cohere says AISLE identified more than 500 previously unknown vulnerabilities across more than 100 codebases in its first year out of stealth. Those results are company-supplied figures.
As AI becomes part of critical infrastructure, security and trust need to be built in from the start, not added later.
Jaya Baloo, Cohere’s incoming chief information security officer
Its stated design combines model capabilities with infrastructure, governance, security and deployment flexibility, rather than treating the model alone as the complete system customers need.
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