F5 Warns: Enterprises Are Running Naked AI

AI is shipping faster than security teams can catch it—and the attack surface is quietly exploding.In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, Shawn Wormke of F5 and Chris Konrad of World Wide Technology unpack the rise of what they call “naked AI”—enterprise AI systems deployed without proper data controls, API protection, or governance.Drawing on new F5 research, they reveal why only 2% of organizations are truly AI-ready, how shadow AI and exposed interfaces are multiplying risk, and why bolting on security after deployment is already too late. As AI systems move toward greater autonomy—and quantum-era threats loom—the conversation makes one thing clear: trust has to be designed into the AI lifecycle from day one.If your organization is racing to production, experimenting with agents, or scaling AI faster than policy can keep up, this episode is a wake-up call.Support for this episode provided by: Red HatMore about this week's guests:Chris Konrad is a global cybersecurity executive and Vice President of Global Cyber at World Wide Technology. Since joining WWT in 2014, he has helped build and scale its $4.5B global security business. Chris leads global cyber strategy, practice development, and partner engagement, aligning security programs to business outcomes across public and private sectors. With 27+ years of experience, he is a trusted advisor to C-suite leaders and a member of the Forbes Technology Council, known for turning cybersecurity into a strategic enabler of resilience and growth.Chris's top pick: Secure All Together: 5 Principles for Building a Culture of CybersecurityShawn Womke is Senior Vice President of Product Management at F5, leading the strategic direction of a portfolio central to how customers build, secure, and scale modern applications. Since joining F5 in 2013, he has helped deliver products grounded in real-world use cases, from open-source innovation in Kubernetes and OpenStack to leading the Aspen Mesh incubation and serving as General Manager of NGINX. With experience spanning Cisco, startups, and global enterprises, Shawn is focused on uniting teams around clear vision, customer impact, and execution at scale.Shawn's top pick: Texas A&M University System Teams Up with WWT for Cyber Range ChallengeThe AI Proving Ground Podcast leverages the deep AI technical and business expertise from within World Wide Technology's one-of-a-kind AI Proving Ground, which provides unrivaled access to the world's leading AI technologies. This unique lab environment accelerates your ability to learn about, test, train and implement AI solutions. Learn more about WWT's AI Proving Ground.The AI Proving Ground is a composable lab environment that features the latest high-performance infrastructure and reference architectures from the world's leading AI companies, such as NVIDIA, Cisco, Dell, F5, AMD, Intel and others.Developed within our Advanced Technology Center (ATC), this one-of-a-kind lab environment empowers IT teams to evaluate and test AI infrastructure, software and solutions for efficacy, scalability and flexibility — all under one roof. The AI Proving Ground provides visibility into data flows across the entire development pipeline, enabling more informed decision-making while safeguarding production environments.