OneTrust's new CEO shares vision for company amid maturing AI governance landscape

Over the last decade, OneTrust has built itself from a startup into being a globally recognized brand known for its privacy program management and artificial intelligence governance platform. 

Last month marked the beginning of a new era at the company, however, when it named former Radiant Systems and Snap One CEO John Heyman to the same role at OneTrust. Heyman replaces OneTrust founder and former CEO Kabir Barday, CIPP/E, CIPP/US, CIPM, CIPT, FIP, who will remain on the company's board of directors in an advisory capacity. 

In a recent interview with the IAPP, Heyman said the global rush to integrate AI into daily business operations is "presenting an enormous opportunity" for OneTrust's customers seeking to apply agentic systems to their technology stack. As more and more AI agents are deployed across sectors, businesses will need to look for solutions to manage those agents' activities and ensure compliance with relevant legal frameworks. 

"They're going to have hundreds and then thousands of agents working all the time, and that's going to create big opportunities, but also bigger risks than they've ever seen before," Heyman said. "OneTrust is in the best position to enable them to drive innovation in their businesses by delivering systems that let them trust the data and technology in their enterprises."

Heyman, who was most recently a partner at StellarIQ, said he was excited for the new opportunity at OneTrust at this current juncture. As he familiarizes himself with the company's suite of solutions, OneTrust will continue to build on its existing AI governance offering, which he likened to "building the agents that are going to watch the agents."

In the current landscape, Heyman said, companies integrating agentic AI systems are in the early stages of understanding their AI inventory. However, he said, in short time "the proliferation of (AI) agents is going to drive a need for a host of new functionality inside AI governance," which will see governance tasks evolve from simply conducting an inventory of agents in use, to autonomously monitoring them.  

"AI governance is in its infancy. If this was a baseball game, we just finished the middle of the first inning," Heyman said. "We're going to go from the middle of first to the seventh inning stretch very quickly and we've got to prepare our customers for it. Companies will need to understand what data is being collected by their agents, how that data is being shared and making sure it stays within the four walls of their enterprise."

Outgoing CEO Barday said in a statement that, throughout Heyman's career, he has demonstrated a "proven track record of innovation, customer obsession, and (a) deep experience growing (business-to-business) technology companies" amid a "pivotal time" for the company and the wider technology vendor market. 

"Growing adoption of AI across organizations has led to massive demand for OneTrust solutions that help enable the responsible use of data and AI," Barday said. "This is a pivotal time to bring on a new CEO who can harness this momentum and drive OneTrust's next chapter of growth."

Now nearly a month in his new post, Heyman called himself a "lifelong learner" and said Barday has become a "great partner" for him as he learns the ropes in his new role.  

"The thing I love about OneTrust is the domain skills of our people who understand the technology, and our customer needs inside and out," Heyman said. "He knows more in the tip of his finger than I’ll know in my entire career here, so a partnership with him is really important."