SailPoint, a leading enterprise identity security firm, has turned to a former Microsoft identity chief to steer its product strategy, appointing Levent Besik as its new Chief Product Officer. The move signals a significant push to dominate the burgeoning field of AI security and governance.
A strategic hire for the AI era
Besik, who will report to Executive Vice President of Product and CTO Chandra Gnanasambandam, joins SailPoint from Microsoft, where he most recently served as Vice President of Product Management for the tech giant’s Identity division, leading its Human and Agentic Identity platform. His career includes executive product leadership roles at Okta, where he focused on Customer Identity, and at Google, where he led the Cloud AI platform and Solutions organisation. His technical background extends back to an earlier decade-long tenure at Google beginning in 2002 as a software engineer.
Chandra Gnanasambandam stated that Besik’s deep expertise and entrepreneurial mindset made him the ideal leader to guide the product organisation through its next phase of growth. “I’m excited to join forces with Levent as we continue to drive the future of identity security through innovation,” Gnanasambandam said.
The critical challenge: securing the AI explosion
The appointment comes as enterprises grapple with a security landscape transformed by artificial intelligence. Besik explicitly framed his new role around this urgent challenge. “With the rapid rise of AI, enterprises are urgently seeking solutions to secure, govern, and protect agents end to end,” he stated. “The world demands an identity solution that provides AI security and governance across all clouds and platforms. I believe SailPoint is uniquely positioned as the trusted partner to meet this critical need.”
SailPoint’s strategy is built on the premise that non-human identities, including AI agents, now vastly outnumber human ones in enterprise environments. The company has been incorporating AI and machine learning into its own platform since 2017 to automate identity processes. Its recent innovations are squarely aimed at what it calls “agentic AI” governance, introducing new connectors to discover and govern AI agents from major platforms like Microsoft 365 Co-Pilot, Databricks, Amazon Bedrock, and Google Vertex AI. A “Shadow AI Remediation” feature has also been launched to provide visibility and control over unsanctioned AI usage within organisations.
The company has announced a series of platform enhancements to address these complexities. These include new privilege management capabilities for discovering and securing privileged access, advanced tools for governing non-human identities and machine accounts, and improved observability features for detecting risk within its Identity Graph. Further modernisation, including a redesigned Access Certification engine, is planned for the second half of 2026.
Building on momentum
SailPoint, which is listed on Nasdaq under the ticker SAIL, is investing this push from a position of financial strength. The company reported total annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $1,040 million and revenue of $266 million for its fiscal third quarter ended October 31, 2025. It surpassed the $1 billion ARR milestone in 2025 and, as of April 2026, reported a 23% year-over-year revenue increase for the preceding twelve months, reaching $1.07 billion.
In a competitive identity and access management (IAM) market that includes rivals like Okta, Microsoft Azure AD, and CyberArk, SailPoint has cemented its reputation as a leader in identity governance. The company has been recognised as a Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Identity Governance and Administration. Its stated mission is to transform identity from a point of vulnerability into a security advantage through an intelligent, adaptive platform trusted by major global organisations.
