Q&A: Adaptiva’s Deepak Kumar on Autonomous Endpoint Management

Adaptiva is a leader in autonomous endpoint management, delivering the fastest and smartest way to patch and secure devices at scale. Its OneSite platform gives IT and security teams a hands-free, continuous approach to software delivery, patching, and vulnerability remediation. With two decades of innovation, Adaptiva helps many of the world’s largest enterprises boost efficiency, reduce risk, and accelerate patching across millions of endpoints.

In this executive Q&A, CEO Deepak Kumar shares how his career, from emergency medicine to shaping SCCM/MEM at Microsoft, continues to inspire Adaptiva’s bold vision for autonomous endpoint management. He reflects on early innovations, including authoring the Thinkweek paper that evolved into Microsoft Teams, and discusses how Adaptiva’s focus on autonomy, intelligent remediation, and customer-centric design is transforming enterprise security. Kumar’s leadership philosophy is pairing innovation with real-world impact that drives a culture where Adaptiva engineers push the boundaries of what endpoint security can achieve.

1. Career Journey: Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career, especially one that shaped your leadership approach at your current company?

One of the most defining moments in my career came during my time at Microsoft, when I had the opportunity to author a Thinkweek paper for Bill Gates that ultimately became Project Greenwich, now known as Microsoft Teams. That experience reinforced a lesson I’ve carried into every role since: true innovation happens when you can see how bold ideas can scale into paradigm shifts that change how people work and communicate. At Adaptiva, that mindset drives everything we do: building solutions that make enterprise security faster, fundamentally smarter, and more autonomous.

2. Career Path: What initially brought you to this specific career path, and how did it lead to your role in this company?

I went to med school and graduated at a very young age. Medicine, particularly emergency medicine, was a fascinating career, and I enjoyed a lot of success, and went into private practice pretty early. The career-defining switch for me came when I fell in love with computers. Over time, I found myself increasingly fascinated by the innovation unfolding in technology, particularly the power of software to impact millions of lives at once. That led me to pivot into computer science and later join Microsoft, where I helped design SCCM/MEM. Founding Adaptiva was a natural progression – it was my opportunity to push the boundaries of what endpoint management and security could be if we applied intelligence and automation at scale.

3. Company Differentiation: What makes your company stand out from competitors in the market? Can you share an example that highlights this?

What truly sets Adaptiva apart is our commitment to full autonomy and scale. Many security solutions identify vulnerabilities; we go further by remediating them autonomously and intelligently. Our peer-to-peer architecture eliminates traditional infrastructure barriers, enabling instant, secure patch delivery anywhere in the world. One of our large auto retail customers, for example, reclaimed more than 10 hours per week per engineer that had previously been spent on manual patching across 190 locations, while gaining greater confidence in consistent, timely remediation. And because OneSite Patch uses a peer-to-peer, single-server model, customers can achieve these efficiencies without deploying fleets of distribution servers. That kind of measurable impact is what sets Adaptiva apart.

4. Product Innovation: Are you working on any exciting new products or projects? How do you think this innovation will positively impact your customers?

We’re continuing to advance autonomous patching with deeper intelligence and control. One of the projects I’m most excited about involves applying AI-driven analytics to help organizations predict vulnerabilities before they become exploitable. Combined with our autonomous patching technology, this will allow enterprises to move from reactive defense to proactive prevention, dramatically reducing exposure windows and giving teams unprecedented confidence in their security posture.

5. Success Insight: What was the tipping point for your company’s recent success? Was there a change in strategy or approach that others might learn from?

Adaptiva’s tipping point came when we embraced autonomy as the foundation of our strategy. Instead of simply automating patching workflows, we built technology that continuously manages and remediates endpoints without manual intervention or network disruption. This shift redefined how customers view patch management, not as a repetitive task, but as a seamless, self-sustaining process that keeps every device secure and up to date. The success of OneSite Patch proved the value of this approach and established Adaptiva as a leader in autonomous endpoint management.

6. Challenges and Lessons: Can you share a significant challenge your company faced and how you overcame it? What key lesson did that experience provide?

Like any company pioneering a new technology, one of our biggest challenges was helping customers trust automation with something as sensitive as patching. We overcame that by designing control features, which we describe as “autonomy with oversight.” IT teams can pause, roll back, or validate updates anytime. That balance between automation and human control became a key differentiator for Adaptiva and taught us that trust is just as important as technical excellence when driving innovation.

7. Leadership Impact: In just a few words, what differentiates your leadership role from others in the company? What impact does this have on company culture or product success?

My role as CEO is to keep Adaptiva focused on the intersection of innovation and practicality. I encourage our teams to challenge assumptions but always tie every idea back to customer outcomes. That philosophy has shaped a culture where engineers and product leaders feel empowered to solve real-world problems, not just build features. It’s why Adaptiva continues to stay ahead of the curve. We innovate with purpose.

To explore Deepak Kumar’s vision and Adaptiva’s advancements in autonomous endpoint management, visit the website here.

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