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Continuing our series on presenting our Fellows and their work with AI, we're meeting John Ang, who is our Principal Architect based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
John is one of our AI ambassadors in the Kuala Lumpur office. Together with his team, he has played a key role in showing colleagues that AI is worth their time — and in helping them use it in ways that genuinely improve their work.
When John joined F-Secure, our approach to AI looked very different. There was hesitation. Some laughed at AI’s mistakes and hallucinations. Others felt they could write better code faster on their own. A few even saw using AI as “cheating.” Just over a year later, that mindset has shifted completely.
"In the beginning, there was a lot of resistance," John explains. "We had people who thought that the quality of work would be better without AI. And honestly, when AI hallucinates or makes assumptions, it's hard to fault them for thinking that in the first place."
Show, don't tell – Leading by example
John's approach was to show rather than tell other people what to do with AI and how to ensure the quality of work. He started organizing biweekly demo sessions where team members could see real examples of AI in action. Not theoretical use cases, but actual work being done by their colleagues.
The turning point came when people started understanding a simple truth: better input equals better output. When someone laughed because AI suggested using an outdated Python library, John's response was straightforward: "Tell AI which Python version you want. It'll give you what you need."
How using AI benefits us
John and his team use AI across their work in ways that have made a big impact on how fast they can get things done. John’s estimation is that AI enables them to work about 50 to 100% faster than they would be able to work without it.
Here is what that looks like in practice:
Architecture documentation: F-Secure has a detailed template for proposing new solutions and designs. John and his team can feed the template and context to AI, which drafts a baseline document in 10-20 minutes. Then they review and refine it. What used to take hours now takes a fraction of the time.
Rapid prototyping: When they need to validate a design concept, they can use AI to build throwaway prototypes. The code might not be production-ready, but it quickly shows whether an idea can work or not.
Real development: In Q4, the team ran an experiment, developing an actual service using AI as the primary tool. When requirements changed mid-project (as they often tend to do), the developer's response was telling: "Don't worry, we have AI. The change can be very fast."
From the company's perspective, this means more flexibility and faster delivery, which benefits our customers directly.
What makes F-Secure different
John has been working with AI for quite some time now. For example, before joining F-Secure, John used AI to uncover a cryptocurrency scam. He found a suspicious YouTube ad promoting a trading technique, grabbed the source code, and fed it to Claude to reverse engineer. Within hours, he'd identified the scammer's wallet and reported it to Google.
It is a clear example of what happens when domain expertise meets the right AI tools. You can go deeper and move faster than you could on your own.
John also brings a broad industry perspective. After years as a consultant, he still speaks regularly with people at other companies. What he sees at F-Secure stands out.
"I don't know of any other companies that use AI the way F-Secure does," he says. "Some are still trying to host their own models to save money, which seems backwards. We're focused on building features we can sell, not on infrastructure projects that don't move the business forward."
At F-Secure, employees have company-wide access to best-in-class AI tools for internal work, including Claude Code for development workflows. We handle company data securely and have moved beyond the “is this allowed?” phase that many organizations are still stuck in.
The message is clear: use AI to get better at your work responsibly and ethically. It is an AI-first mindset built into our culture and the way we work across the company.
Going forward
The biweekly AI demos in Kuala Lumpur are currently on hold because the team doesn't need them anymore. They've moved on from experimenting with AI to simply using it as part of their daily work.
The resistance John and his team encountered when he first joined is mostly gone. Some of the change came from education – showing people how to prompt more effectively and demonstrating real results. But mostly, it came from giving people the tools and permission to try things themselves and see what works for them and what doesn't. John leads the team and provides ideas on what needs to be done, but ultimately it was teamwork that made it happen.
Looking ahead, John sees AI moving toward more autonomous work. Not just helping developers write code, but connecting multiple AI agents to run entire workflows. The result: better code quality, fewer bugs, faster releases, and more resilient systems.
The question isn't "what can AI do?" anymore. It's "what can we invent with it?" That shift in thinking matters more than any specific tool or technique.
If you want to work somewhere that's already doing this instead of talking about doing it, F-Secure can offer you the environment where you can explore how AI can amplify your expertise and turn that into impact.
If you are interested in joining our team, check out our open positions at company.f-secure.com/en/careers#latest-jobs.