The federal government's most underrated cybersecurity tool

In this episode of Safe Mode, we sit down with Philip George, Executive Technical Strategist at Merlin Group to talk about the real challenges federal agencies face at the intersection of cybersecurity, AI adoption, and post-quantum cryptography. Philip breaks down the disconnect between cyber spending and mission outcomes, why rushing into AI without sound identity management and data integrity is a recipe for disaster, and what evolving federal cryptographic requirements and shortened certificate lifecycles mean for government IT. We dig into why visibility — simply knowing what's on your network — remains the most powerful defensive posture regardless of the threat, explore the tension between zero trust and agentic AI, and hear Philip's counterintuitive take that the answer to AI-driven security challenges might just be more AI, purpose-built and narrow in scope. Also, Greg sits down with Chris Townsend, Elastic’s Global VP of Public Sector, at the Elastic Public Sector Summit to unpack how agencies can operationalize data amid rising cyber threats. Townsend explains why open standards and cross-agency data sharing matter—and how agentic AI can help modernize SOC operations by prioritizing alerts and speeding response times.  In our reporter chat, Greg Otto and Derek Johnson break down the surge of AI-in-cybersecurity developments—from Anthropic’s Project Glasswing and the “too dangerous to release” Mythos model to OpenAI’s trusted-access approach—focusing on what these tools could mean for vulnerability discovery and the balance between real risk and hype.

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(138)

Zero days, zero order: The chaos reshaping vulnerability disclosure

The rules of responsible disclosure were written for a different era — one where humans found bugs, humans reported them, and 90 days felt like plenty of time to patch. That era is over. In this epis...

18 Kesä 40min

Why the autonomous SOC Is the wrong goal

On this week's episode, we're joined by Mike Nichols, General Manager of Security at Elastic, fresh off the Gartner Security and Risk Summit in the D.C. area, where AI dominated every conversation on ...

11 Kesä 33min

The last layer standing

What happens when an "assume breach" scenario turns into a total corporate wipeout? In this episode of Safe Mode, host Greg welcomes Brandon Willitts, Director of Cyber Resilience at Everpure, to pull...

4 Kesä 35min

From Two Weeks to Three Days: The KEV Deadline Debate

Drawing on his experience from his time in government working directly on CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, Todd Beardsley, VP of Security Research at runZero, explains what it act...

29 Touko 37min

Can specialized security survive Daybreak and Mythos?

In this episode, we sit down with Lior Div, CEO of 7AI, at a moment when the ground is shifting under the entire security industry. With AI lowering the barrier to entry for attackers, supply chain co...

21 Touko 38min

Why access brokers have stubbornly remained successful

Anna Pham of Huntress joins Safe Mode to discuss the current landscape of initial access brokers and how their tactics continue to support ransomware operations. She explains that attackers are still ...

14 Touko 31min

Can you prove which agent did what?

In this week's episode, Greg Otto talks with Howard Ting, CEO of Opal Security, about the growing security challenges created by AI agents inside the enterprise, especially around identity governance,...

7 Touko 28min

How government and Industry can raise the cost of cybercrime

Sophos CEO Joe Levy and Director of Government Partnerships Alex Rose join Safe Mode from Washington, D.C. to discuss what meaningful public-private cybersecurity partnership looks like right now—movi...

30 Huhti 43min