Modernizing Web Application Defense with Agentic Control with Itai Gafni

Join Itai Gafni, Co-Founder and CEO of Huskeys, for an unvarnished evaluation of why web application firewalls (WAF) have remained functionally stuck in the 1990s. While modern application traffic has evolved from human browsers to a complex matrix of APIs, automated microservices, and autonomous AI agents, legacy WAF solutions still rely on brittle, static rule sets. An alumnus of Israel's elite Unit 8200 where he engineered advanced intelligence and cyber platforms, Itai is leading a massive paradigm shift. In this episode, we discover why security teams are terrified of updating their firewall rules—and how introducing an agentic control plane allows enterprises to optimize threat detection without breaking production or driving away legitimate customer revenue.🎯 Insights You’ll Learn:The Dark Side of AI: How automated traffic, malicious LLM scripts, and hostile autonomous agents are weaponizing requests to overwhelm 30-year-old WAF logic.The "Don't Touch It" Paradox: Why security teams choose to leave outdated, fragile WAF rules intact rather than risk blocking real users and destroying transaction revenue.Defining Edge Security Management (ESM): How Huskeys is defining an entirely new category—functioning as an abstraction layer on top of existing infrastructure (Cloudflare, Akamai, AWS WAF) instead of forcing a costly hardware rip-and-replace.Revenue as a Game Changer: Shifting the narrative of security from a cost center to a growth protector by cutting false positives, reducing blocked users, and stopping unnecessary spend.Context-Aware Protection: How Huskeys enriches core firewall logs with ambient business logic to distinguish between genuine malicious intent and non-standard user actions.Automated Simulation & Rollout: Replacing manual, high-risk rule configurations with a closed-loop system that validates, simulates, and deploys configurations in minutes.Unit 8200 Architecture Patterns: Applying military-grade AI optimization and offensive bypass research to defensive enterprise perimeter architecture.🌍 Why This Matters:Every week, global enterprises balance on a razor's edge: configure their firewalls too tightly and they accidentally block thousands of paying customers; loosen them up and they invite massive API abuse and zero-day exploits. In 2026, web security can no longer be handled as a series of manual, static filters. Itai Gafni and the team at Huskeys are transforming edge firewalls into an organic, adaptive digital boundary. Backed by $8M in seed funding and deployed across massive, high-volume networks like TikTok, Merlin Entertainments, and Hugging Face, Huskeys proves that edge protection doesn't have to function as a business bottleneck. By translating vendor-specific syntax into automated, risk-adjusted decisions, Itai is giving engineering teams the confidence to finally optimize their defenses.👤 Expert Background:Co-Founder & CEO of Huskeys, the industry’s first patent-pending Edge Security Management platform.Former AI Innovation Lead within Unit 8200, architecting cutting-edge infrastructure across cybersecurity and intelligence networks.Enterprise Infrastructure Veteran with a proven track record of aligning web app protection alongside core corporate revenue operations.Tech Pioneer backed by an $8 million seed round from prominent VCs including 10D, SV Angel, and toDay Ventures.🎙 Lent by Gary Fowler, CEO of GSD Venture Studios — global AI entrepreneur, investor, and innovation leader spotlighting founders navigating the realities of building in the AI era.💡 Perfect For:CISOs, AppSec engineers, VPs of Infrastructure, Cloud Architects, and e-commerce technology executives who want to maximize their existing WAF investments while completely eliminating false-positive blocks.