As enterprises plan for the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead in 2025, Krishna Prasad, CIO at UST, shares extensive insights on how leaders can harness new technologies effectively.
In a recent interview with CIO&Leader, he addressed topics ranging from generative AI and automation to cybersecurity and strategic ROI—highlighting the essential role that CIOs will play in orchestrating balanced innovation.
CIO, UST
Embracing AI and Its Business Impact
“We fully expect that 2025 will be a year defined by AI evolution and adoption in a variety of areas,” says Krishna Prasad. He further explains that “the areas most relevant to UST would be around agentic and generative AI to automate and re-imagine our business including new products and services, internal operations, go-to-market approach and talent strategy.”
His emphasis on agentic and generative AI underscores the breadth of this technology’s potential. From building new solutions to transforming internal processes, AI will influence how organizations innovate, deliver services, and remain competitive. Prasad points out the variety of applications, including “responding to AI generated cyber threats,” and “new tools and models for software development including automated code generation, synthetic test data generation and AI based copilots.”
According to Prasad, these AI-driven capabilities matter greatly to UST because “they are increasingly impacting the business of our clients and becoming a part of the contracts that we are signing.” That underscores how AI has transitioned from an emerging trend to a core component of modern enterprise engagements.
Balancing Innovation with Sustainable ROI
When asked about how CIOs can balance innovation and cost pressures, Prasad acknowledges the ongoing dilemma. “The problem of balancing investments in innovative technologies with cost pressures and ROI is not new,” he says. “What makes today’s environment different is the ready accessibility and availability of the technologies to the workforce.”
For Prasad, the CIO’s role is twofold: acting as a “business enabler on one hand while educating teams about the risks on the other.” He suggests this equilibrium will vary by industry but can be managed through “a framework that strikes the right balance between risk, experience (for customers or employees), organization speed and transparency.”
Prasad also highlights the phenomenon of “citizen developers”—employees outside of IT who can now build solutions with minimal coding expertise:
“Most businesses should expect the increasing role of citizen developers and be prepared to encourage experimentation with appropriate guardrails.”
However, once a project matures and nears deployment, Prasad emphasizes the importance of “safeguard[ing] the data, get[ting] clarity on business outcomes to be delivered and be[ing] part of the governance function to ensure prioritization and ROI.”
Evolving Cybersecurity Strategies
The rapid shift in the cybersecurity landscape cannot be overstated. Prasad notes that “the cyberthreat landscape is evolving as rapidly as technologies change,” with cybercriminals now “more open to experimentation and cooperation than the people fighting them.”
AI plays a dual role here—while it equips enterprises to defend themselves more effectively, it also empowers attackers. Prasad warns that “the ready availability to AI tools and marketplaces has changed the nature of cybercrime which can [become] rapidly personalized, targeted and continuous.” As a result, UST has prioritized a “continuous threat evaluation and monitoring approach”:
“We use AI tools to understand an organization’s technology environment combined with broader threat intelligence to rapidly understand the specific risks to the organization. We are then able to rapidly create and deploy targeted fixes or countermeasures to mitigate those risks.”
Prasad goes on to describe UST’s strategic decision “away from building the underly[ing] security operations platform to customizing the platform for continuous threat evaluation and rapid response,” positioning the Interpres Security acquisition via CyberProof as a key part of this shift.
A Roadmap for 2025
Prasad outlines the company’s strategic roadmap, which also reflects trends that many CIOs will find relevant, “The key tenets of UST’s growth with an emphasis on higher revenue per employee, simplified operations, and a continued focus on long term client relationships have not changed in 2025,” he mentioned.
However, AI has triggered a more extensive transformation, “AI is having a significant impact not only on the services we deliver but also alter our own way of doing business.”
UST’s priority is to help clients “get AI ready by having the right data governance, responsible use guidelines, talent development etc.” The biggest traction comes from delivering “automation and productivity boosting solutions using AI, although the benefits are quantified in terms of business outcome.”
That focus on business outcome is central to how UST engages with partners. “We are re-imaging how we engage with clients to make contracts more business outcome focused.”
Furthermore, Prasad underscores that “we are re-imaging our service offerings by infusing AI for greater impact,” while also developing closer ties with hyperscalers to ensure scalability. Talent management remains paramount, “Most importantly, we are re-imaging how our talent needs will evolve and getting our teams ready for it.”