Security and trust are the foundation of successful AI adoption, especially for enterprises managing sensitive data. In this OpenStudio conversation from OpenText World 2025, we explore how OpenText approaches secure AI implementation, leveraging three decades of data stewardship experience and a vendor-agnostic philosophy to help customers confidently embrace AI while protecting what matters most—their data and their business.

Watch the full interview:

Introduction

Ajit: Hello everyone, welcome to Open Studio, my name is Ajit Yohannan.and if you have been following Open Studio for the last couple of episodes, we have been having great conversations about AI, how it's impacting customers, how we're helping some of our partners, all of that, and I'm glad to have with me Edward Kiledjian, Global CISO and SVP for Cybersecurity, Privacy, Compliance, and Resilience at OpenText, and I'll call you Ed. So, Ed is our information security expert, if I may call you, and that's one topic that I wanted to cover and I reached out to Ed. So thank you for joining Open Studio.

Edward: Thank you for inviting me. I'm excited to be here.

OpenText World 2025 Experience

Ajit: Awesome. Let's get started with asking this question. How has OpenText World 2025 so far for you?

Edward: I absolutely love it. I think this is a phenomenal event. I look forward to it every year because it brings together our peers, our brothers and sisters that are in the field, it brings together our customers, it brings together our partners, and you really get to feel the heartbeat of what people are talking about, what people are thinking about, what people are expecting from us. So it's just an incredible opportunity to get a lot of smart people together and have engaging conversations about what really matters. So it's just a unique opportunity that's phenomenal.

The Role of Chief Information Security Officer

Ajit: That's awesome. You bring in so much of energy and passion. Thank you for that. Let's talk about what the role entails, what do you do, so that we bring—

Edward: So my name is Edward Kiledjian and I run security for OpenText. The title officially is I'm the Chief Information Security Officer. But in addition to cybersecurity, I own all of our sales support. I own our compliance operations. I own business continuity, and I recently took over privacy, so a little bit of work, but I think what we're seeing is all of those different things, although they feel very separate, there's a huge synergy by putting them together. I think that's what OpenText is doing. We saw that the future was to fuse these together so they can get synergies and I think we're one step ahead of the industry, but it's coming for everybody else.

Secure AI Innovation for OpenText Customers

Ajit: You saw some of the announcements, some of the product innovations, some of the way we say about AI with security. So do you want to elaborate on that, how, what that means for our customers?

Edward: Sure, I think all of our customers that I've spoken to understand that AI is a requirement. They have to do AI. It's not optional. I think the big challenge is they're all concerned about what AI means to the longevity of their business. How do I AI, how do I do AI in a way that is secure, that adds value to what we're already doing, and that really will contribute to their stakeholders, whether those are the customers, the government, or stakeholders. And so what OpenText brings is a unique mix. Our customers have trusted us for 30 years to store and manage their data, and for 30 years we've kept the data safe and available. And so customers are coming to us and saying, okay, OpenText, you've been a great steward of my data. You've enabled me to build all of these incredible processes to streamline my business, provide better level of service for my customers. Now can you be my partner and help us get to the next level? I think that's what you heard on stage from people like Muhi who said, here are the benefits that customers are getting like an airport in Switzerland, right? They streamlined operations, reduced complaints, improved operations, and this is exactly what we bring to the table. We have your data and we can tell you it's clean, we've secured your data and we know how to secure it. Let us help you to get that next level of efficiency through AI automation, doing it the right way.

And I think the other thing that was really interesting that makes OpenText unique is we're not tied into any LLMs. We're not tied into any unique vendor technologies. We will bring our own where we think something has a unique advantage for what the customer wants to achieve. But if the customer is bought into something specific for whatever reason, we can bring their AI and put our expertise on top of it and deliver the value they'd expect. So, it's kind of a unique offering. Very few companies are doing this. I think we have a great solution, incredible team. We have a proven track record, and I think that's what makes OpenText a success.

Customer Excitement and Secure AI Implementation

Ajit: Love it. Love it. You covered it so well. And as you said, you're talking to some of the customers, so are they feeling excited about some of these innovations and do you see a lot of ways in which you can help them?

Edward: For sure. So I think we have a lot of customers that were early adopters, and I think that's fantastic because now we can show these customers to the others as social proof. We can show them what AI done right can achieve. So yes, I think we're having discussions about customers. Lots of customers are saying, hey, Ed, how do we do this in a way that is secure. They're reading all the same newspapers that you are, all the blog posts that you are saying, hey, there are injection attacks, there are crafting attacks, there are pharming attacks. There's one attack that we call burping. Customers are saying, help us. And I think that's what you heard with Muhi saying, we're going to leverage the best of the best. We're going to figure out what works best for your specific requirement. But then in addition to that, we're going to wrap the OpenText guardrails around it and so we're going to put a level of security that if you went to any of these other companies you wouldn't get. I think that's what's unique. That's what's really phenomenal about it.

Competitive Landscape and AI Innovation

Ajit: That's awesome. It is. It's really cool. And how do you think in the competitive landscape, how are we doing with other enterprise softwares who are in the same space?

Edward: I think we're an early adopter. I think the AI landscape is still unknown, to be determined. Lots of people ask me, do you think the future of AI will be chatbots? And the answer is probably no. I think chatbot is the most visual thing cause we all go home, we go to this web page and we get really cool results out of it. But I think the real power of AI won't be a chatbot. It will be everything in the background. And that's all of the bots that we're going to be building. The power will be taking the mundane away from the people, so that the people can concentrate on the activities that generate the most value for the organization. There's no value in taking a receipt, scanning it and then clicking on a button to say recognize OCR. We can automate all of that and we've been doing that for 10 years. Let us take that to the next level for our customers.

FY26 Priorities and OpenText's Security Scale

Ajit: And what's your FY26 priorities? How are things shaping up in your organization?

Edward: OpenText is a unique creature from a security perspective because that's the bed I sleep in. We're quite large. We don't share our numbers generally, but what I will say is that our size and scope is competitive to almost most nation state levels. We see more data than most companies, most countries, and even most data sharing organizations, so we have kind of a unique vantage point. For us, we've been on the AI bandwagon for a long time. We see hundreds of billions of events every month. So we've been doing AI for about 5 years. We've been refining it. And for us, our FY26 roadmap is to continue that journey, to leverage the newer tools, to figure out what they can and can't do. And a lot of those tools are our own tools. So, we are a consumer of third party tools. We're a consumer of OpenText tools and we drive engineering to make our tools better because if it works at OpenText, it will work anywhere else, I promise you.

Using OpenText Products for Security

Ajit: Are you also using a lot of OpenText products?

Edward: A lot. Obviously we don't talk openly about what products we use, but we use a lot of our products. What I'll say is even if you take a publicly open war like what happened in Ukraine and you look at the press releases that the Russian government did about some of our products, I think you'll discover that some of the protection that Ukraine was able to achieve in their cyber stuff comes from OpenText. So we don't talk about it a lot, but there's a lot of very interesting and cool technology that is bleeding edge, that's protecting some of the most vulnerable organizations in the world, whether it's government departments, whether it's large corporations that are being targeted by nation states, or whether it's entire countries being attacked by foreign states.

Ajit: That's awesome. I think I'm glad you shared so much from the action that you are in.

Edward: Oh, it's phenomenal. You love this.

Ajit: Awesome. It's amazing. I'm so glad.

Message to Customers and Partners

Ajit: So you want any final comments to our customers and partners who are listening?

Edward: What I'll tell our customers is, we are looking to build long-term partnerships with our customers. We are not simply a vendor. So what I tell my customers, and we've met hundreds of them here at the event, is, let's sit down. Let's have a true conversation about your needs. Leave your preconceived notions at the table. Leave it at the door. Come to us with your problems, and let's work together to solve your issues, because I think we'll be able to come up with creative solutions that you didn't think about. And I think we did that today with a lot of customers. We did that yesterday with a lot of customers. Just bring us to the table. We want to be your partner. We'll help you solve those problems.

Closing

Ajit: Awesome. That's a great note for our customers to partner with us and talk to Ed, and he's happy to help and thank you for joining Open Studio and sharing so passionately about all things OpenText security.

Edward: Thank you for inviting me. It's great to be here.

Ajit: Thank you. Thank you all for tuning in.

About OpenStudio

OpenStudio is OpenText’s media hub for thought leadership and innovation. This series explores stories of progress and success from industry experts, visionaries, and trailblazers. Our goal is to inspire, inform, and connect audiences with the people and ideas shaping the future of the digital world.

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