Nate Kharrl
Co-Founder & CEO, Spec
Executive Profile
Nate Kharrl is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Spec (SpecTrust, Inc.), a Delaware-based company specializing in cutting-edge, real-time customer journey security solutions. He is distinguished for his expertise in application security, fraud prevention, technical product management, customer engagement, and consulting within the broader cloud and web security spheres. Under his leadership, Spec has raised $30M in venture-backed funding and developed advanced solutions now used by Fortune 500 enterprises worldwide.
Professional Background and Leadership
With a career start in technology circa 2007–2008, Kharrl’s trajectory has consistently followed the intersection of software development, security operations, and fraud detection. He possesses a hands-on technical background—having worked as a “rockstar developer” and key team leader—as well as a deep understanding of client relations and product strategy. His early fascination with cybersecurity and adversarial behavior (dating back to “hacker-curious” origins in his teens) has strongly informed his practical approach, emphasizing not just technical defenses, but also the human and organizational factors in fraud operations.
Prior to founding Spec (separated from its predecessor, SpecTrust, in 2013), Kharrl held roles with direct client impact, including engagements with major industry players like Akamai and security projects for brands such as Visa. At Akamai, he gained crucial experience identifying and combatting sophisticated fraud patterns—from lone-wolf to organized criminal rings—highlighting the changing landscape fueled by cloud adoption, evolving payment methods, and mass internet access.
Industry Presence and Thought Leadership
Kharrl is an acknowledged authority in cybersecurity and payments risk, featured as an expert at major events such as RSA Conference 2024 and as a guest on high-profile industry podcasts, including Glenbrook’s Payments on Fire™. Recent notable appearances demonstrate his ability to articulate complex concepts (e.g., the use of bots, botnets, and AI-enabled agentic attacks) to both technical and executive audiences.
He maintains a visible leadership voice, recently announcing Spec’s inclusion in Mastercard's inaugural Start Path Security Solutions cohort (2024), reflecting industry recognition and trust.
Company Overview: Spec
Spec is positioned as an innovator in real-time security for digital customer journeys, providing enterprises with solutions to detect, analyze, and mitigate advanced fraud and security threats. Its unique platform architecture enables the analysis of billions of user interactions and millions of journeys at sub-millisecond latency, giving large-scale businesses unparalleled visibility across fragmented or “siloed” fraud and bot-defense solutions.
Key customers: Spec is trusted by fraud and security teams at global enterprises, including those operating in highly targeted verticals such as payments, ticketing, e-commerce, and financial services.
Team and structure:
- Nate Kharrl (Co-Founder & CEO)
- Patrick Chen (Co-Founder & COO)
- Meghan Thomas (Product Lead)
- Jay Cunningham (Engineering Lead)
- Be'Anka Ashaolu (Marketing Lead)
Core Focus and Differentiators
Security Philosophy
Kharrl’s strategic vision at Spec centers on abandoning ineffective, siloed legacy approaches, advocating for solutions that consider customer journeys holistically—recognizing that attackers often operate across organizational boundaries and leverage more data than legitimate users themselves.
Notable innovations include:
- Development of a real-time defense layer that detects and blocks threats while remaining invisible to “good” users, enhancing frictionless customer experience.
- Identification and remediation of data leaks in customer applications and APIs, which attackers exploit to train and adapt AI-driven attack models.
- Advanced use of deception techniques, such as stealth “honeypots” and misleading response management, to misinform and stall attackers (including gen AI-powered “agents”) rather than simply applying blocks or declines.
Market Impact
Spec rapidly advanced from inception during the COVID-19 pandemic to become a leading venture-backed vendor, driven by a proactive approach that allows businesses to identify and mitigate previously-invisible segments of the customer journey. According to Kharrl, traditional fraud, ID verification, and behavioral analytics tools often leave up to 93% of the customer journey invisible to legacy security controls, a gap which Spec addresses with its granular, session-by-session data correlation.
Thought Leadership: Industry Trends and Challenges
Kharrl is recognized for identifying and explaining shifts in attacker tactics, specifically the progression from lone actors to professionalized transnational fraud rings employing GenAI and agentic bots. He segments the threat landscape as follows:
- Transnational Crime Rings: State or oligarch-funded with high scale and sophistication.
- Mid-sized Fraud Rings: Staffed by 10–50 fraudsters developing proprietary tooling and rapidly testing new GenAI capabilities.
- Lone “Prosumer” Operators: Individuals leveraging “fraud-as-a-service,” now including agentic bots available on secondary markets (e.g., Discord, Telegram).
He notes that:
- Adversarial AI adoption outpaces defensive tooling, with fraudsters quickly integrating and iterating on new tools.
- Defensive lag offers first-mover advantages to organizations able to aggregate and operationalize cross-functional data (fraud, identity, payments, security).
- Mitigation techniques that maximize attacker confusion and minimize feedback (as opposed to blunt blocking) substantially increase the durability of defensive posture.
Kharrl advocates for organizations to:
- Improve open communication and education across teams;
- Assess business tolerance for operational friction;
- Identify and empower “data champions” to break down silos between fraud, ID, payments, and security.
Achievements & Recognition
- Venture Funding: Led Spec to $30M in venture capital, scaling solutions into production within top global enterprises.
- Thought Leader: Regularly featured at flagship industry events and media (RSA, Glenbrook Payments podcast, YouTube Category Visionaries).
- Product Trust: Selection for high-profile industry programs, including Mastercard’s Start Path Security Solutions.
Professional Interests
- Application and cloud security
- Fraud prevention tactics and operations
- AI-driven threat detection and mitigation
- Cross-functional risk management strategies
- Real-time, customer-focused security architectures
- Data-driven product innovation
Key Insights for Engagement
Kharrl values data-driven, real-world solutions that transcend industry silos, with a focus on practical collaboration between engineering, product, and operations teams. He brings credibility in bridging rapid-response technical leadership with strategic, board-level communication. Organizations engaging with Kharrl and Spec can expect a strong partnership approach: one that seeks to align emerging technology with business resilience against dynamic, AI-driven adversaries.
Contact: [Nate Kharrl LinkedIn](http://www.linkedin.com/in/nate-kharrl)
