Jay Kaplan

CEO and Co-founder of Synack

Jay Kaplan is CEO and Co-founder of Synack, the leading platform for human and agentic AI-powered penetration testing. Jay co-founded Synack in 2013 to deliver continuous security testing through a vetted, global network of researchers. Before launching Synack, he spent nearly a decade in cybersecurity roles at the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Security Agency, most recently as a Senior Cyber Vulnerability Analyst supporting counterterrorism-related intelligence operations. Jay was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in Enterprise Technology and holds a B.S. and M.S. from George Washington University, where he studied under an NSA-funded fellowship.

Recent research

Sara AI Pentesting Is Now Generally Available: The Model Is Changing

Agentic AI

May 4, 2026

Sara AI Pentesting Is Now Generally Available: The Model Is Changing

Why the Traditional Pentesting Model Is No Longer Enough Over the past 20 years, I’ve seen the threat landscape evolve from opportunistic attackers, to organized cybercrime, to nation-state campaigns. Each shift forced security teams to adapt. What’s happening right now is different. AI models coming out of Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and X are rewriting the […]

Why AI Alone Won’t Fix the Security Problem

Finding Value in the AI Noise Over the past year, the cybersecurity conversation has shifted hard toward AI. Walk through any conference and you’ll see it everywhere: agentic systems, autonomous testing, and machines operating at a scale that humans simply can’t match. A lot of that progress is real. At Synack, we’re investing heavily in […]

Jay Kaplan

6 min read