Corelight Welcomes Veteran Security Research Leader Ali Islam to Lead Corelight Labs

Islam brings unique strengths at the intersection of security, networking, and AI

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 14, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Corelight, the fastest-growing provider of network detection and response (NDR) solutions, today announced that veteran security researcher Ali Islam has joined the company to lead Corelight Labs, focused on delivering industry-leading AI-driven data and detections to enable complete, detailed monitoring of enterprise network activity for threat hunting, analysis, and response.

Corelight Labs is a research and development team within Corelight focused on creating new ways to deepen network visibility and provide powerful analytics to strengthen cybersecurity. The team develops cutting-edge content and techniques for threat hunting, analysis, and response by leveraging network evidence and insights. This involves exploring new methods for threat detection, enhancing network monitoring capabilities, and sharing with the broader security community through open-source contributions.

"Corelight has always been focused on providing security teams with the ground truth they need to find and disrupt threats traversing their networks, from Zeek as the industry standard through today's most advanced AI techniques," said Brian Dye, Corelight CEO. "Ali's experience and expertise can help us take that to the next level of effectiveness, scale, and innovation to stay ahead of the attackers in the cyber arms race."

Islam joins Corelight from Palo Alto Networks where he spent the last 5 years building and scaling their global malware analysis platform focusing on threat research and malware countermeasures. In addition, he expanded his remit there to deliver on the new AI security initiatives, specifically around model scanning and agentic red teaming. Prior to that he was the co-founder and CEO of Numen, focused on providing security solutions for connected cars. Islam also served as a founding security researcher at FireEye Labs, where he later led the overall R&D efforts for their flagship network (NX) and email (EX) products focusing on advanced persistent threat (APT) research and detection as well as machine learning-based automated detection systems.

"I am a builder and researcher at heart and I love the fast pace of startups. Corelight is at an incredibly exciting stage focused on the tremendous growth potential at the intersection of NDR and AI, two forces that are reshaping the future of cybersecurity," said Islam. "Corelight's focus on network visibility provides a unique vantage point to security teams who are able to see everything happening in their environment by studying the network. I believe this is the place to be to solve future cybersecurity challenges."

Islam has a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore. He also holds a master's degree in business administration from the University of California at Berkeley as well as a master's degree in network security from Monash University Australia. In addition, Islam holds multiple patents in network and AI security and has spoken at major industry conferences including Defcon and RSA. He has also collaborated with government agencies such as the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Korean Internet & Security Agency (KISA) on intelligence-sharing efforts to combat nation-state threats.

About Corelight
Corelight transforms network and cloud activity into evidence that security teams use to proactively hunt for threats, accelerate response to incidents, gain complete network visibility and create powerful analytics. Corelight's global customers include Global 2000 companies, major government agencies, and large research universities. Based in San Francisco, Corelight is an open-core security company founded by the creators of Zeek®, the widely used open source network security technology. For more information, visit www.corelight.com.

SOURCE Corelight