E13 Bonus: The Return of Backbox, and AI as a Trusted Advisor, with Rekha Shenoy, CEO of Backbox

Today, we have a special return episode from our friends at Backbox, who we heard the creation story of the company back in Season 8. In this episode, we talk with Rekha Shenoy, CEO of Backbox. Since Rekha took the helm as CEO in May 2024, the company has expanded beyond traditional security automation to launch its major BackBox 8.0 platform, unifying cloud and on-prem infrastructure visibility. They’ve also integrated human-in-the-loop, advisor-focused AI capabilities - and are back to let us know some even more "big things" happening with platform, around agentic .  Questions: Tell me about yourself—your path into tech and what shapes how you lead (background, influences, hobbies, family). Tell me about BackBox. What does the company do, and what drew you in to take the CEO seat in 2024? How has the product matured? How do you build your roadmap? Zoom out — what are you most proud of in shaping BackBox? What does the future look like for your product and team? BackBox describes AI as a "trusted advisor, not an autonomous agent" — four principles: protecting infrastructure, repeatable/verifiable results, supporting (not replacing) engineers, and transparency about how AI reaches conclusions. Where did that philosophy come from, and why hold that line while competitors race toward full autonomy? What does "responsible AI" actually look like in the product — not as a value statement, but as a design constraint that shaped the engineering decision? Tell us about your recent launch and what it enables a network team to do that they couldn't before? How does the launch extend or test that responsible-AI philosophy? At what point does "AI as advisor" start to feel like a limitation rather than a safeguard? Links https://backbox.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/rekha-shenoy-950b23/ https://www.codestory.co/episodes/s8-bonus-bypassing-brittle-custom-scripts-implementing-automated-multi-tenant-configuration-backups-and-vulnerability-patching-at-scale-with-andrew-kahl-of-backbox/ Current Sponsors: Tiger Data Protected Harbor Render Fitnexa Perplexity Entelligence Checkout our Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/ Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor. Our Sponsors: * Check out Granola and use my code granola.ai/CODESTORY for a great deal: https://granola.ai * Check out Perplexity and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://www.perplexity.ai Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy