The Cyber Business Podcast

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Oct 2026

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Welcome to The Cyber Business Podcast where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and share their inspiring stories.

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October 27, 2026Episode 24952 min

Smart People Know You Can't Just Let AI Do Everything with Brian Walters - Ep 249

Guest Introduction Brian Walters is the Director of IT at Building Plastics Inc , known as BPI, an employee owned flooring and tile distributor based in Memphis, Tennessee with 13 locations, mostly in the Mid South, and more than 60 years in business. Brian spent years in consulting across government, nonprofit, and commercial clients, and he says that experience taught him that understanding the business makes an IT leader better. He was brought in about a year ago, after a turnover in the C-suite, to transform technology at a company that sees itself as not just a flooring distributor but also an IT company, and he holds all the responsibility of a CIO without the title. He joins the show to talk about wading into AI through governance and education, putting data and security fundamentals first, and why he believes human expertise remains essential as AI use grows. Here's a Glimpse of What You'll Learn Why BPI sees itself as an IT company as well as a flooring distributor Why Brian believes understanding the business makes IT leaders better at driving transformation How Brian is wading into AI through governance, employee education, and a business reason for every use Why a modern ERP rollout became a chance to clean up data, and what garbage in, garbage out means for AI Why Brian focused on foundational security, including multi factor authentication, before rolling out AI tools Why Brian wants tools that show what employees are doing with AI, as guardrails and not Big Brother How an AI written ERP script showed Brian why oversight and expert review still matter Why Brian says smart people know you can't just let AI do everything, from deepfakes to children's education In This Episode Brian opens with the story of BPI, an employee owned company for more than 60 years that began as a vinyl flooring business and grew into wood floors, tile, and countertops, ranking, as he understands it, among the top five flooring distributors in the country and a little higher in tile. He joined about a year ago, after a turnover in the C-suite, to help transform technology, which meant working through technical debt, including an old mainframe system customized so heavily it could no longer take regular updates, and an older mindset that IT is there to keep the lights on. The new leadership sees it differently, and Brian says his consulting years taught him that when you understand the business, you know the pain points and gaps and can help leaders make educated decisions and set strategic goals. His first quick wins were security and governance, and a move to a modern SaaS ERP became a chance to make sure the data was good. The center of the conversation is how Brian approaches AI, which he sums up as wading in. He thinks it is wise to wade in and educate, and points to the high failure rates often cited for AI projects as a reason to slow down. He built governance policies and employee education on the premise that people are going to use AI no matter what, arguing that locking it down is not reasonable, and he asks for a strategic business reason behind every use. He stresses that good data is key and recalls the developer's rule of garbage in, garbage out, which is why governance boards and data cleanup are part of the ERP modernization. BPI already uses AI for meeting minutes and some generic workflows, but his priority is foundational security, such as implementing multi factor authentication, and he is cost conscious as a company that is not a Fortune 500. He is candid about ethics concerns, noting no rule says you must tell people they are talking to AI, and that China and the European Union seem further along on guidance. Brian then looks ahead. On his roadmap this year is a monitoring tool that shows how employees use AI, which he frames as guardrails and not Big Brother: protecting proprietary information while learning which tools actually help people. He explains why oversight matters with a story about a non IT employee who sent him an AI written script to implement in the ERP, one that could not account for how the system or program fits together, and he sees IT roles shifting toward pulse checks, log monitoring, and making sure the model keeps delivering both technical and business ROI. When a C-suite colleague asked whether he had done a presentation in AI, he answered that he used 30 years of experience to write the prompts and question the data sources, because smart people know you can't just let AI do everything. He raises deepfakes as a growing cybersecurity concern, notes that AI is getting better at identifying AI, such as in resumes, and worries about how AI will affect children's education, hoping we teach creative and constructive thinking and don't end up like Wall-E. Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Cyberlynx CyberLynx is a Bethesda managed IT and cybersecurity company. Local techs you know, not a call center. Month-to-month. 24/7 intrusion detection. We help growing companies with managed IT, help desk, backup and recovery, and a fractional CIO. Talk to us at https://cyberlynx.com/contact , info@cyberlynx.com , or 301-798-9170.

October 26, 2026Episode 24858 min

Why Fear of AI Hands the Bad Guys an Edge with Jason Stockinger - Ep 248

Guest Introduction Jason Stockinger is VP and CISO of Cambium Learning Group , an education technology company made up of four power brands serving school districts and homeschoolers across the United States, where he protects student data and the teachers who administer it. A 21-year military veteran who also spent 17 years in banking, Jason says he has not had his hands on a keyboard since 2008, and that his job now is advocating for cybersecurity and the funding to match. He is the author of Stop Misreading Talent, a book on leadership drawing on the neurodivergent, veteran, and corporate worlds, shaped by his own early missteps as a leader and by what he has learned as the father of a neurodivergent son. He joins the show to talk about why not a culture fit is a leadership cop out, why a team should look like a window and not a mirror, and where AI helps and does not help in security and daily work. Here's a Glimpse of What You'll Learn Why Jason calls not a culture fit a cop out, and what he thinks leaders should ask instead How reduction in force meetings, with names on a spreadsheet, can turn into a popularity contest Why Jason says a team should look like a window, not a mirror Why an analyst who thinks differently may be your best ally for log files and forensics What splitting the last slice of pizza with his son taught him about people who attack problems from a different angle How a Monsters, Inc. style AI assistant pointed at SharePoint helped Jason get up to speed at a new company Why Jason says the bad guys have an edge because many organizations are scared to use AI to combat AI Why Jason says CISOs will tell you the real problem is users clicking on things, and whether there is a patch for the human In This Episode Jason opens by describing Cambium and his role protecting students, their data, and the teachers who administer it, and credits his team, especially the people answering phone calls from users and customers and the IT and security operations staff with eyes on glass, now assisted by AI, as the unsung heroes. He then traces his leadership story from 21 years in the military, where everyone has had a bad leader, to the realization that he was one of those leaders early on. He says his neurodivergent son has taught him more about leadership, and crossing from the veteran world into the corporate one meant learning that you cannot tell people to drop and give you 20 push ups. Those lessons became his book, which argues you may be sitting on talent you did not even realize was there. He is blunt that not a culture fit is a cop out, recalling meetings where names on a spreadsheet are judged like a high school popularity contest, and urges leaders to ask whether the person is simply in the wrong seat on the bus. The center of the conversation is curiosity and diversity of thinking. Jason explains that leaders are often given about 40 percent of the information and asked to decide fast, relying on experience that may be decades old, and that his own quick judgments caused pain, so he now advises taking an extra minute to ask what you are missing. Early in his career he surrounded himself with people who looked and talked like him, until he realized he was looking in a mirror, and he now says a team should look like a window. A neurodivergent analyst in a hoodie crushing Mountain Dews may be the best person for log files and forensics, he says, and some of the people with the best results have ignored corporate politics and gotten things done their own way. He shares a story about splitting a last slice of pizza with his son, who wanted the meat and cheese, as proof that some people attack problems from a completely different angle, and wonders whether AI is missing that because of the bias built into it. He closes the thread with his own fit story: cutting grass as a kid, 17 years in a bank, and a love of AI that finds a time for meetings. In the back half, Jason turns to AI, security, and people. He sees AI augmenting what we dislike but warns that models can drift from fundamentals, and he uses Copilot every morning to summarize his day. He notes that CISOs think like bad guys, always looking for the next vector of attack, and while defenders are often one or two steps behind, they catch up quickly, so never doubt human ingenuity. He built a Monsters, Inc. style assistant that berates him as it searches SharePoint, yet still values the person who tells you where the coffee is. He argues the bad guys have an edge because many organizations are scared to put AI in their environment to combat AI, and that most CISOs will tell you the problem is users clicking, so he hopes AI takes on more and humans can focus on relationships. Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Cyberlynx CyberLynx is a Bethesda managed IT and cybersecurity company. Local techs you know, not a call center. Month-to-month. 24/7 intrusion detection. We help growing companies with managed IT, help desk, backup and recovery, and a fractional CIO. Talk to us at https://cyberlynx.com/contact , info@cyberlynx.com , or 301-798-9170.

October 20, 2026Episode 24741 min

Who Gets the Benefit of AI? Enhancing the Core Experience with Neil Goodrich - Ep 247

Guest Introduction Neil Goodrich is SVP and Senior Head of Technology at Phillip Jeffries , a family founded and family run luxury wall covering company that grew from a garage startup with 10 grasscloths into 5,500 SKUs and 15 locations worldwide. The company works with artisans around the world and is deeply involved in environmental and charitable causes, including 500,000 trees planted with the Arbor Day Foundation. Neil came to the role from professional services, drawn to a company that makes products with techniques handed down over generations, and he leads a technology mandate built around being the easiest wall covering option for an interior designer. He joins the show to talk about how AI fits a craft business, how to spend the benefit of AI productivity, and why he believes security has shifted from hardening to response time. Here's a Glimpse of What You'll Learn How Phillip Jeffries uses technology to be the easiest wall covering option for an interior designer Why Neil sees the trade wall covering space as behind the curve on technology, and how that sets the company apart How an AI agent could help showroom staff cover 5,500 SKUs and questions from swatch matching to shipping dates Why Neil frames the real AI question as how to spend the benefit, and why he chooses to enhance the core experience What the robber barons and the Mandalorian teach Neil about ratcheting up work and handing too much to AI How AI gave a self described non artist new creative skills, and why he still expects a premium on handmade work Why Neil says patching jumped from a nice to have to a top priority overnight Why Neil argues hardening is no longer sufficient and response time is what matters when AI finds every target In This Episode Neil opens with the story of Phillip Jeffries, a family run luxury wall covering business whose culture of giving back, from blood drives to local kids' organizations spending the day at the office, is built into structured programs. He explains that the trade wall covering space is generally behind the curve on technology, so his team's cornerstone is making Phillip Jeffries the easiest option for an interior designer, a mandate he says predates him and is part of the company's DNA. AI has first paid off inside the IT shop, where QA, code writing, and troubleshooting have been a freebie, and his focus now is the showroom. Staff there field questions as wide as matching a swatch from another product to when a back ordered order will ship across 5,500 SKUs, and Neil sees an AI agent as a way to give them smooth, instantaneous answers. He notes that interior designers are essentially project managers juggling orders from many vendors, and wants wall covering to be the fire and forget part of their job, so they can fall backward into the company's arms and trust its recommendations. The middle of the conversation turns to a question Neil says is still very much in the wild: who gets the benefit of AI, and how do you spend it? Companies can reduce headcount or change their scaling ratio so the business grows without adding people, and while others are making crazy bets in one direction or the other, Neil says Phillip Jeffries is in neither camp and is focused on enhancing its core experience. He ties that to the history of the work week, noting that the robber barons were shocked when productivity rose after workers got two days off, and wonders whether people plugged in 18 hours a day, with AI making it easy to knock out one more thing, are being worn down. He is candid that he has little hope for a four day work week anytime soon. A Mandalorian episode in which a planet cannot shut down its rogue robots because nobody remembers how to do anything becomes his cautionary tale about handing over too much. Neil then explains that one of the attractions of joining a company that makes things was the lineage and artistry, and that AI has been additive for him personally: someone who once withdrew from his only art class when grading shifted from effort to quality now creates images he never could. He is careful about the other side, thinking of graphic designers and photographers, and predicts a premium on artisan, handmade work. On security, he says patching jumped from a nice to have to a top priority overnight, and he sees AI tools that query an inventory of PCs and patch what is missing as a way to keep maintenance as fast as attackers exploit. At his last company, security agents found that three separate lows were really one high, and he argues hardening is no longer sufficient: it is about response time, because AI means anyone can instantly find the mom and pop hardware store in Dubuque or a forgotten division in a basement, and obscurity is no longer a weapon. Sponrsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Cyberlynx CyberLynx is a Bethesda managed IT and cybersecurity company. Local techs you know, not a call center. Month-to-month. 24/7 intrusion detection. We help growing companies with managed IT, help desk, backup and recovery, and a fractional CIO. Talk to us at https://cyberlynx.com/contact , info@cyberlynx.com , or 301-798-9170.

October 15, 2026Episode 24637 min

Start Small, Scale Smart, Govern Carefully: A CISO's AI Mantra with Adam Palmer - Ep 246

Guest Introduction Adam Palmer is the CISO of First Hawaiian Bank , the largest bank in the state of Hawaii, with almost $30 billion in assets and operations across Hawaii, Guam, and Saipan. With 25 years in cybersecurity, he began as a U.S. military officer, worked on both the vendor and operational sides of the industry, and spent ten years in cybersecurity roles in Europe before taking on his current role just under six years ago. Adam leads the bank's technical security, governance, operational management, and risk reduction efforts, and he thrives on transformation work, building programs and operating models from the ground up. He joins the show to talk about the advantages of a mid sized bank, why he insists on a human in the lead of AI driven decisions, how he vets vendors in a regulated environment, and why he believes fighting AI with AI is the only way to keep pace. Here's a Glimpse of What You'll Learn Why Adam says a mid sized bank's agility can be a real advantage over a larger institution Why Adam counsels patience and planning, including months of assessment, over chasing a quick win How start small, scale smart, govern carefully shapes an AI committee that reviews every use case Why Adam refuses to be the department of no, and how he presents trade-offs so leaders decide with eyes open What human in the lead, not human in the loop, means for a regulated security operations center Why Adam wants vendors to prove transparency instead of wrapping an AI buzzword around a traditional tool Why Adam argues cyber risk should be quantified in business terms instead of red, yellow, and green heat maps Why Adam believes security leaders must fight AI with AI, and why crisis mode is the wrong response In This Episode Adam opens by explaining why working at a mid sized bank has real advantages. Having worked at a global bank where the budget was larger but a large ship turned slower, he says First Hawaiian Bank's agility lets his team adopt more advanced tools and move faster, and that smaller does not mean less advanced, since the bank carries the same programs and similar risks at a different scale. His advice to new CISOs is patience and planning: when he arrived in early 2021, he resisted the pressure for a quick win, spent the first several months carefully assessing the program's maturity, built a multi year plan, and then executed on it, which he says produced better effectiveness. He enjoys stepping into roles where he is the first person in the job, and likes building his own operating model while still aligning to frameworks and holding himself accountable to industry standards. The center of the conversation is how Adam approaches AI, which he sums up as start small, scale smart, govern carefully. He sits on the bank's AI committee, which carefully reviews every use case, and he wants AI implemented only when it has a legitimate, clearly articulated business value, with his team designing the guardrails. He insists security cannot be the department of no, because saying no only drives shadow IT, so he lets the business identify where it sees value and then presents the trade-offs, risks, and costs so leadership decides with eyes open. On the security side, he sees AI improving mean time to detect and mean time to resolve, an idea central to a presentation he gave on transforming the bank's security operations center to build board and executive confidence, provided tools stay auditable and transparent. That is where his distinction comes in: not human in the loop, but human in the lead, with AI prioritizing incidents and consolidating information, and an analyst making the final call on critical decisions. Adam is just as direct about vendors and metrics. He calls the AI security space a bit of the Wild West and says the vendors that stand out show transparency, prove their tools are truly better than what he can achieve without them, and do not simply wrap a traditional tool in an AI buzzword, since auditors and regulators demand to see what the AI is doing. He is open to smaller companies that prove themselves and avoids depending on a single platform as a single point of failure. He presses for cyber risk quantification in business terms, noting that every other part of the business presents priorities in dollars, and calls identity the perimeter, with human and non human identities needing strong control because authorized activity can still be malicious. The danger, he says, is moving too fast, yet the only answer to machine speed offense is equally strong AI on defense, and he is surprised when security leaders act in crisis mode, since his bank has planned for years to move at machine speed. Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Cyberlynx CyberLynx is a Bethesda managed IT and cybersecurity company. Local techs you know, not a call center. Month-to-month. 24/7 intrusion detection. We help growing companies with managed IT, help desk, backup and recovery, and a fractional CIO. Talk to us at https://cyberlynx.com/contact , info@cyberlynx.com , or 301-798-9170.

October 14, 2026Episode 24547 min

$20 a Seat Snuck In on Us: The Hidden Budget Problem of AI with Michael McAndrews - Ep 245

Guest Introduction Michael McAndrews is the CISO of Archwell Capital , a family of companies working primarily in financial services, with a focus on mortgages, insurance, and the technology behind them. Its largest organization, Motor, is a business process outsourcing group and an AI development group, and Michael secures a globally distributed workforce with very few brick and mortar offices. A hands on engineer who spent years in incident response, he brings pragmatism to the tension between AI efficiency and risk. He joins the show to talk about governing AI development in a regulated industry, why he tells his team to treat AI like an intern, how small per seat AI spending slips past traditional budget scrutiny, and why he relies on carefully chosen partners to counter AI powered threats he does not have the in house defenses to meet alone. Here's a Glimpse of What You'll Learn Why Michael says AI can flag a missed signature on a mortgage application but should never make the decision How Michael separates two AI risks: employee usage that leaks data and governance of AI development Why Michael tells his team to treat AI like an intern, with a specific task and a checked result How $20 per seat spread over six to nine months can quietly add up to a $200,000 software purchase Why renting private AI infrastructure from a provider can beat owning it, and why accountability matters How Michael relies on partner and tool selection to counter AI powered attacks Why Michael turned the tables and asked the host about CISO tenure and the pressure of the job In This Episode Michael opens by describing Archwell as a family of companies built around financial services, with Motor as its largest organization, and by drawing a clear line between the two AI problems he manages. The first is employee usage, where he worries about data leaking to third parties through the growing number of tools that are building in AI, and is putting controls in place. The second is governance of AI development, where Archwell is setting standards so its products avoid bias and never let AI make the actual decision. In mortgage lending, he explains, AI can flag that an applicant forgot to sign a field or check a box before the file moves through the process, while the decision itself stays with underwriters and humans. That philosophy carries into a favorite instruction for his team: treat AI like an intern, give it a specific task, always check the work, and remember it will not replace you, even as developers who hit their token limits react as if someone took their lollipop away. The conversation then turns to the economics of AI, where Michael sees an unexpected check on the replacement narrative. A $200,000 software request would draw tough questions from leadership, he says, but $20 per seat across a whole workforce over six or nine months reaches the same total and slips by unnoticed, which is why he is building governance around consumption versus time based models. Asked whether organizations will bring AI in house, Michael says Archwell has tried and found larger partners with more infrastructure to be more efficient and cost effective, and notes that in house does not have to mean on premises, since a private cloud rented from a provider can keep data private without the burden of owning hardware. For now, contracts are his main control with frontier model providers, covering no training on Archwell data, retention, and how quickly they must notify him of an incident, and he prefers a provider who is accountable if something goes wrong over holding the patching risk himself. In the back half, Michael turns to people and the road ahead. A hands on engineer who admits the move into leadership has been a challenge, he describes pulling his hands back from the keyboard, begrudgingly, in exchange for control over tools, training, and budget that lets him help the whole team, and he tells a younger teammate who never wants to lead that his skills will eventually outgrow individual tools. He calls this the most exciting shift he has seen in quite some time, not a scary one, while still preferring a human voice to an AI agent on the phone. On defense, he explains that because AI lowers the barrier to entry for attackers, he reached a clear conclusion after asking a CISO group that included Glasswing companies what a smaller company should do: partner and tool selection matter most, and he becomes a spectator watching two robots fight it out with his own money on the line. He closes with a candid conversation about unplugging, noting that not every problem needs solving immediately, and in a rare role reversal asks the host about CISO tenure and the pressure of the job, which he says leaders mostly put on themselves. Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Cyberlynx CyberLynx is a Bethesda managed IT and cybersecurity company. Local techs you know, not a call center. Month-to-month. 24/7 intrusion detection. We help growing companies with managed IT, help desk, backup and recovery, and a fractional CIO. Talk to us at https://cyberlynx.com/contact , info@cyberlynx.com , or 301-798-9170.

October 12, 2026Episode 24446 min

Air Gaps Just Don't Exist Anymore: Securing Critical Infrastructure with Tony Bryson - Ep 244

Guest Introduction Tony Bryson is the CISO of the Town of Gilbert, Arizona , and returns to the show to talk about the risk he named when his CTO asked him, six years ago, what the town's greatest risk was: critical infrastructure. Gilbert runs water, wastewater, water collection, and traffic operation systems, the same kinds of operational technology that municipalities and private operators across the country depend on every day. Tony has taken his message on IT and OT convergence to utility audiences and has built a partnership model with his town's public works teams that brings in trusted outside experts. He joins the show to explain what has changed about the threat, how a town can respond without taking on SCADA itself, and why telling residents the whole story matters as much as any technical control. Here's a Glimpse of What You'll Learn Why Tony says the air gap that once protected operational technology no longer exists How vendor remote access for support and patching quietly defeats the old air gap mentality Why attacks on critical infrastructure are often first noticed by a plant worker, not by security tools Why OT's focus on availability, six nines instead of five, changes how patching and monitoring get done How Gilbert partnered with public works and brought in trusted third parties who speak the plant's language Why Tony argues for a federal minimum standard for securing critical infrastructure How honest conversations with residents about water rates built understanding and trust In This Episode Tony opens with the question his CTO asked him when he first joined Gilbert six years ago, what is the town's greatest risk, and his immediate answer: critical infrastructure. He explains that these operational technology systems were never built with the same security assumptions as IT, and that while they once sat in environments that were not noteworthy targets, nation-state actors, hacktivist collectives, and cyber syndicates now treat them as low hanging fruit, partly because intrusion detection and system monitoring rarely exist on the OT side. He notes that attacks have often been discovered by a plant worker who spotted something odd on a SCADA screen, and that the old air gap defense has been undone by service and subscription models in which vendors require remote access for support and patching. The result is what he calls a convergence between IT and OT that forces plants to adopt IT best practices. The middle of the conversation is a clear-eyed look at why OT security lags and what actually works. Tony explains that plants have traditionally avoided antivirus because scans can knock over sensitive systems like historians, rely on SCADA monitoring that watches the process rather than the network, and sometimes run default logins, thin segregation of duties, and weak backups. He adds that critical infrastructure leans hard on availability, targeting six nines where IT balances confidentiality, integrity, and availability, which he describes as a scalene triangle with availability stretched out. He recalls presenting on IT and OT convergence at a Southwest utilities seminar in Las Vegas in 2023, where the room looked at him like he had four heads, and he was then swarmed with questions in the hallway for up to two hours. Gilbert's answer has been partnership: educating public works, being candid that his team knows nothing about SCADA, and bringing in the best vendors in the marketplace as trusted third parties who speak the language of the plant, covering network segregation, asset and supply chain management, ongoing vulnerability assessment, and full time system monitoring. The final stretch moves from technology to policy and public trust. Tony makes the case that critical infrastructure needs a federal minimum standard, noting that water and wastewater operators work from IEC 62443 and the Purdue model while each industry follows its own frameworks, and he explains why states push back on unfunded mandates. He argues that a million dollars of security spending is small next to the billions of dollars of buried infrastructure and the public trust at stake. He then brings it home with Gilbert's own story: aging infrastructure in acidic soil forced a dramatic water rate increase, and when a resident raised it at an AI symposium in downtown Phoenix, Tony chose to explain exactly what the town was facing and how smart meters might someday help residents find leaks. Afterward, the resident thanked him and said he now understood why the increase was required, even though he was still not happy about it. Tony closes by honoring plant operators as rock stars who keep the water flowing, and urging them to bring in experts for what they do not know they do not know. Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Cyberlynx CyberLynx is a Bethesda managed IT and cybersecurity company. Local techs you know, not a call center. Month-to-month. 24/7 intrusion detection. We help growing companies with managed IT, help desk, backup and recovery, and a fractional CIO. Talk to us at https://cyberlynx.com/contact , info@cyberlynx.com , or 301-798-9170.

October 7, 2026Episode 24351 min

Human or Agent? Eight Identity Scenarios to Test Any AI Vendor with Marina Kelly - Ep 243

Guest Introduction Marina Kelly is the CISO for the City of Raleigh, North Carolina , the state capital and, as she points out, the 39th largest city in the country, home to a thriving Research Triangle tech community, several universities, and roughly two dozen city departments that she describes as separate business verticals. Her team is responsible for cybersecurity across that entire stack, from planning and development to the 911 team to Raleigh Water. Marina's path into the role is anything but typical: she spent 10 years as a classroom teacher before earning a master's degree in computer science at UNC Greensboro, then built a career through business analysis, application development, and database administration across public and private sectors on the way to CTO and CISO roles. She joins the show to share four principles for leading security in the age of AI, how she vets vendors in a market moving faster than contracts can, and why she counts all 4,500 city employees as members of her security team. Here's a Glimpse of What You'll Learn Why Marina says security governance must now move at the speed of AI change, with incident response plans reviewed quarterly Marina's four principles for leading a security program through the AI era Why Marina believes AI will neither save us nor kill us, and how that shapes Raleigh's approach The eight identity scenarios Marina asks vendors about to tell human actions from agent actions Why Marina wants a partner, not a vendor, and why she advises holding out for one year contracts How Raleigh is switching to an awareness platform that builds customized training content with AI Why Marina counts all 4,500 city employees as members of her information security team In This Episode Marina opens with what makes municipal security distinctive. Raleigh's team secures roughly two dozen departments, each with different services, regulatory requirements, and workforce realities, including seasonal staff, part time staff, and workers under 16. Her calendar might move from planning and development to emergency communications to Raleigh Water in consecutive hours, which she loves, because understanding how the city serves residents is how her team gives departments the risk information they need to make good decisions as stewards of taxpayer dollars. She describes a shift over the past year and a half toward desiloing critical infrastructure, pointing to the water system attacks she says were widely publicized in late July, and the collaborative network she has built: one of her first calls goes to the Wake County CISO, with close ties to state IT and to CISA, the FBI, and DHS. She stresses helping smaller towns where one person may also sit on the council or serve as the weekend janitor, because as she puts it, we can't be in the basement with our hoodies on. The center of the conversation is how Marina leads through AI-driven change. She shares four principles: govern at the speed of change, which means her team moved incident response plan reviews to quarterly; read the adversary and use AI to defend; institutionalize the middle, since AI is not going to save us or kill us; and prepare for drift, with quantum already bearing down. She notes her security team has had a seat at the table from the start of Raleigh's AI work, testing frontier models and guardrails before enterprise rollout. On vendors, she asks existing providers about AI observability first, then talks to startups, wanting a partner rather than a vendor. She quizzes vendors with eight identity scenarios, such as telling a human using their own credentials from an agent using delegated ones, noting that identity was always the real perimeter. She notes two of five AI governance vendors she was monitoring got acquired within six weeks, and advises holding out for one year contracts when possible, citing Gartner's guidance. The back half turns to people. Raleigh is switching awareness training partners to one that generates customized content with AI, because generic vendor content can't keep up with what employees face. She shares a favorite story from new employee onboarding, when an HR colleague described the best feeling in the job: reporting a phishing simulation and getting the congratulations email back. Marina also shares her own path, from a decade of teaching to breaking into development in the early 2000s through business analysis, and offers mentoring advice for women in cybersecurity: bring your own folding chair, be your own best advocate, and learn to tell the story that wins budget in finance's language. She closes by keeping human beings at the center of everything her program does. Sponsor for this episode... This episode is brought to you by Cyberlynx CyberLynx is a Bethesda managed IT and cybersecurity company. Local techs you know, not a call center. Month-to-month. 24/7 intrusion detection. We help growing companies with managed IT, help desk, backup and recovery, and a fractional CIO. Talk to us at https://cyberlynx.com/contact , info@cyberlynx.com , or 301-798-9170.

October 2, 2026Episode 24245 min

Why You Can't Commit to One AI Provider Anymore with Matthew Sanders - Ep 242

Guest Introduction Matthew Sanders is the CISO at Slingshot Aerospace , a company that combines a global sensor network with AI and advanced analytics to help government and commercial customers understand what's happening in space and operate safely. Because of the nature of Slingshot's work, Matthew's biggest concern isn't financially motivated criminals, it's patient nation-state actors willing to linger inside a system undetected for extended periods. He joins the show to talk through prompt injection and model poisoning risk, a striking recent Anthropic threat intelligence report on real world misuse of its own models, and why depending on a single AI provider has become a genuine supply chain risk for organizations in the defense industrial base. Here's a Glimpse of What You'll Learn Why Matthew says nation-state actors, not financially motivated criminals, are his top concern at Slingshot How a recent Anthropic security report revealed threat actors building entire phishing campaigns with minimal prompting Why Matthew believes patching no longer means what it used to against AI-discovered zero days How Matthew uses Claude daily as a second opinion to catch his own team's missed security settings Why defense industrial base policy shifts are forcing security teams away from single-provider AI lock-in How Matthew thinks AI assisted testing could finally solve the oldest blocker in patch management Why Matthew believes the tide in the AI arms race may finally be shifting toward defenders In This Episode Matthew opens by laying out just how much AI has reshaped the security conversation at a company built entirely around AI-driven space intelligence. He walks through the layered risk: prompt injection and model poisoning inside Slingshot's own products, attackers using AI to iterate on attacks faster than ever, and a governance challenge every security leader now faces, trying to understand what tools employees are actually using without slowing the business down. He references a security report Anthropic published just before the recording, detailing how threat actors, including a Russian group targeting Ukraine-based companies, used Claude with only basic instructions to build complete phishing campaigns, compromise hotel Wi-Fi, and create malware targeting iOS, all capability that would have required far more sophistication just a year earlier. He also points back to the MGM breach as a reminder that attackers don't need to target end users at all, since in that case it was a sophisticated IT team itself that got socially engineered. The conversation turns to where Matthew sees real opportunity rather than just risk. He's candid that watching Darktrace's Secure AI product gives him a genuine glimpse of the future, tools that let security professionals finally see what their own organization is doing with AI in real time, the same visibility advantage attackers have enjoyed for longer than defenders have. He argues the fundamentals, zero trust, least privilege, patching, matter more than ever precisely because AI defense tools don't replace them, and describes using Claude personally as a daily second opinion, feeding in his own SSP and compliance documentation to check whether his team is actually doing what they claim to be doing, catching missed settings in minutes rather than letting them slip through unnoticed. He also sees a major unsolved opportunity in AI-assisted testing, arguing the oldest blocker in patch management, the fear that an update will quietly break something else, could finally be addressed if AI could validate changes before they ship rather than after. The back half of the episode gets into the operational realities of running security in the defense industrial base during a moment of real policy upheaval. Matthew describes watching organizations get caught flat-footed when a model provider gets restricted for supply chain reasons overnight, forcing a scramble to alternative tools like Cursor or Codex, and argues this volatility means security leaders can no longer commit to a single AI provider the way they once committed to a single cloud vendor. He connects this to the ongoing pause on CMMC Level 2 requirements and the broader shift toward FedRamp's newer, more automation-driven approach, predicting that continuous AI monitoring will eventually replace much of the paperwork-heavy compliance process entirely. He closes on what he calls a genuinely exciting use case: feeding a full SSP into Claude to get instant gap analysis and self-auditing that used to take a human auditor a full week, compressed down to hours. Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Cyberlynx CyberLynx is a Bethesda managed IT and cybersecurity company. Local techs you know, not a call center. Month-to-month. 24/7 intrusion detection. We help growing companies with managed IT, help desk, backup and recovery, and a fractional CIO. Talk to us at https://cyberlynx.com/contact , info@cyberlynx.com , or 301-798-9170.

September 30, 2026Episode 24142 min

Your Internal Network Is No Longer Trusted with Michael Foster - Ep 241

Guest Introduction Michael Foster is the CISO for the Wisconsin Department of Revenue , an agency he describes as functioning much like the IRS for the state, but with a scope that extends well beyond taxes into the Wisconsin State Lottery and three separate police forces covering everything from lottery fraud to alcohol and tobacco enforcement. His purview covers information security alongside portions of physical security, managing what stays inside the agency and what limited access outside entities are allowed. He joins the show to talk candidly about zero trust architecture, why he's skeptical of pure fight-fire-with-fire thinking, why security has to be sold internally as a business enabler rather than a cost center, and a genuinely unsettling real world story about how a single social media post led directly to a home invasion. Here's a Glimpse of What You'll Learn Why Michael says attackers no longer need a skilled hacker, just a purchased tool set to run on autopilot How Michael's least access philosophy extends zero trust to internal networks, not just external threats Why Michael is cautious about a pure fight-fire-with-fire approach to AI powered attacks How Michael reframes security spending as a business enabler instead of a cost center to get buy-in Why Michael still runs security awareness training even if workplace tools eventually make it obsolete Michael's explanation for why AI hallucinations often come from an organization's own bad data, not the model itself The real story from Michael's own community about a funeral post on social media leading to a home invasion In This Episode Michael opens by describing the unusual breadth of his role, protecting an agency that handles business taxes, the state lottery, and three distinct law enforcement divisions, all of which face constant daily attacks. He's direct that the nature of those attacks has changed fundamentally: attackers no longer need to be skilled, since AI agents can now be set up once and left running indefinitely to probe for openings, discovering the kind of zero day exploits that used to require deep technical expertise. When asked whether fighting AI with AI is simply the obvious answer, Michael pushes back with more nuance than that framing usually gets, warning that an arms race mentality can leave everyone burned, and that the real fix is architectural. He describes a least access philosophy that extends zero trust internally, treating even an organization's own network as untrusted, requiring every user and every AI agent employees build to be segmented down to only the specific applications and data they actually need, monitored the same way a service account would be. The conversation turns to the practical challenge of getting organizations to actually fund this kind of security, and Michael is clear that the winning argument isn't fear, it's framing security spending as a business enabler rather than a cost center, forcing leadership to weigh what could be lost in time, money, and trust against the investment required to prevent it. He's candid that responsibility for security can no longer sit only with IT, and that everyone in an organization has to own some piece of it. On the question of whether AI will eventually make user security awareness training obsolete entirely, Michael offers a genuinely distinct perspective from the more optimistic take Matthew proposes: even if workplace tools someday catch everything automatically, employees still won't have those same protections at home, and Michael continues training specifically to close that gap, since an employee who gets hit personally often ends up missing work to recover from it. The back half of the episode covers two threads that stick with the listener. First, Michael explains that many of the AI hallucinations organizations blame on the model are actually a symptom of poor internal data, meaning the fix is rewriting and cleaning up an organization's own source material before feeding it into any system, not distrusting the AI itself. Second, he shares a story from his own small community of roughly 4,000 people: after a local fire captain passed away, someone used the publicly posted funeral details to determine exactly when his house would be empty and broke in, only to be caught waiting by police, the intruder turning out to be a deputy sheriff. Michael uses the story to make a simple, memorable point about privacy: any piece of information posted publicly will eventually be used by someone, for something, and understanding that risk is now as much a part of the job as any technical control. Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Cyberlynx CyberLynx is a Bethesda managed IT and cybersecurity company. Local techs you know, not a call center. Month-to-month. 24/7 intrusion detection. We help growing companies with managed IT, help desk, backup and recovery, and a fractional CIO. Talk to us at https://cyberlynx.com/contact , info@cyberlynx.com , or 301-798-9170.

September 28, 2026Episode 2401 hr 4 min

Shared Governance in the Age of AI: Keeping the Institution Safe with Bill Guerrero - Ep 240

Guest Introduction Bill Guerrero is the VP of IT at Sacred Heart University , a private, faith-based, residential institution in Fairfield, Connecticut with roughly 10,000 students, 50 buildings, and nearly 2,000 cameras across campus. A proud alum who earned his master's there in 1999, Bill brings an unusual dual background to the role, having started his career at Gartner before spending years as a CFO, a financial lens he now applies directly to how the university budgets for AI. He joins the show during the first week of a new semester to talk through a live third-party security incident his team resolved in real time, why token and credit costs deserve the same budget scrutiny as any other line item, and why he believes the new professional standard is AI-assisted work refined by a human, not work produced by a human alone. Here's a Glimpse of What You'll Learn How Bill's team resolved a third-party zero-day breach affecting a campus vendor in just 24 hours Why Bill treats tokens and credits as a budget item universities can't afford to leave unaccounted for How Bill uses Claude with read-only access to run low-cost internal pen tests against the university's own framework Why Bill believes the new professional standard is AI-assisted work with a human review layer on top How Sacred Heart's shared governance model keeps AI adoption fast without letting any department run rogue Why Bill still uses AI for the small, personal tasks in his life outside the office, including coaching baseball How a real, current incident at a major learning management system provider shaped Bill's own continuity planning In This Episode Bill opens during the exact week cybersecurity pressure peaks for any university, the first week of a new semester, when thousands of students and their devices hit the network at once across a campus with door access systems, high end classroom technology, and nearly 2,000 cameras. He describes a proactive approach built around education before problems start, emailing students, faculty, and staff ahead of time with what to expect and what scams to watch for, while his cybersecurity team, led by his own CISO, works to keep pace with a threat landscape he compares to a constant game of ping pong against attackers who are also upgrading every day. He's candid that Sacred Heart isn't trying to be a bleeding edge leader, running as a Copilot enterprise shop for the past three years, but that shared governance lets academic leaders, faculty, and cybersecurity students get meaningful access without compromising the institution's data. The conversation turns sharply concrete when Bill describes a live incident from the exact weekend of the interview: a third-party vendor supporting the university's mobile credential printing system was hit by a zero-day exploit. Because of layered security defenses including CrowdStrike, Bill's team caught and remedied the breach within 24 hours, and in a notable twist, it was Sacred Heart's own team that first alerted the vendor to the intrusion. He connects this to a broader shift he's watched happen in real time, referencing a recent incident at a major learning management system provider that affected 900 universities, one Sacred Heart avoided, as a reminder that continuity plans written months ago need to be revisited constantly rather than treated as a one-time compliance exercise. The back half of the episode gets into how Bill actually manages AI adoption without letting cost or fear derail it. Drawing on his background as a recovering CFO, he explains why tokens and credits function like a printing budget that can quietly run out, an unbudgeted surprise if leadership isn't paying attention, and why total cost of ownership needs to include this line item explicitly. He describes using Claude with carefully scoped, read-only access to walk through the university's own firewall and network settings, comparing it against Sacred Heart's existing framework to run what amounts to a no-cost internal pen test rather than paying six figures for an external one. He closes on a personal note entirely outside of IT, describing how he used AI to rebuild a baseball practice schedule for a coaching role he's returning to after years away, tweaking the output himself rather than accepting it wholesale, a small example of the exact philosophy he argues the whole university should adopt: let AI produce the polished first draft, then apply the human judgment that makes it genuinely yours. SPONSOR FOR THIS EPISODE: This episode is brought to you by Cyberlynx CyberLynx is a Bethesda managed IT and cybersecurity company. Local techs you know, not a call center. Month-to-month. 24/7 intrusion detection. We help growing companies with managed IT, help desk, backup and recovery, and a fractional CIO. Talk to us at https://cyberlynx.com/contact , info@cyberlynx.com , or 301-798-9170.

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