Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing

Episode Summary:

Gianna and Maria are together on the pod to talk about CyberMarketingCon 2026, happening November 15th through 18th in Austin, Texas.

The theme this year is Create Your Own Adventure. They talk about sessions, tracks, career stories from past conferences, the buddy program, the WhatsApp group, and why Maria is starting a petition to rename customer marketing to community building. She will have a clipboard.

There is also a sloth named Chompers. And Maria has a co-founder discount code for anyone who DMs her.

Cyber Innovation Conference:

The Cyber Innovation Conference is happening October 26th and 27th in Washington, D.C. CISOs, founders, and active investors in one room, with sponsor slots purposefully capped. Society members get 10% off your sponsorship when you mention Cybersecurity Marketing Society or CMS at sign-up.

👉 https://www.cyberinnovationconference.com/sponsors

CyberMarketing Con 2026:CyberMarketing Con is back November 15th through 18th in Austin, Texas, and virtually. 700+ cybersecurity marketers, 4 days of sessions, workshops, and networking built for go-to-market teams in cybersecurity. Tracks for product marketing, field marketing, CMOs, and founders and CEOs. Get your ticket before prices go up on October 1st.

👉 cybermarketingconference.com

Subscribe & Review:

👉 Enjoyed this one? Drop us a quick ⭐ rating or review; it helps more cyber marketers find the show.

📩 Questions, feedback, or want to be a guest? Email: [email protected] 

Follow the Host:

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing. You can join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, on our main LinkedIn page, our Instagram page, or our podcast LinkedIn page. 

See you on the next episode!

Episode Summary:

Lenin Alevski is an AI Security Engineer at Google who spent a week building a text-based cybersecurity survival game in his spare time. Accidental CISO puts you in the seat of the first security hire at a company where everything is on fire, and every fraught and heart-pounding decision leads to one of eight endings.

He sat down with Gianna to talk about how the game came together, why spec-driven development matters more than vibe coding alone, and what 12,000 players and zero marketing budget taught him about building indie cyber games. 

About Lenin:

Lenin Alevski is an AI Security Engineer at Google, where he focuses on threat modeling and security for AI systems and integrations. Before Google, he held security engineering roles at MinIO, OneLogin, and Websec México, where he worked across application security, cloud security, penetration testing, and identity and access management. In his spare time, he is an open-source contributor and the creator of Accidental CISO, a free text-based cybersecurity survival game.

Links & Resources:

Cyber Innovation Conference:

The Cyber Innovation Conference is happening October 26th and 27th in Washington, D.C. CISOs, founders, and active investors in one room, with sponsor slots purposefully capped. Society members get 10% off your sponsorship when you mention Cybersecurity Marketing Society or CMS at sign-up.

👉 https://www.cyberinnovationconference.com/sponsors

CyberMarketing Con 2026:

CyberMarketing Con is back November 15th through 18th in Austin, Texas, and virtually. 700+ cybersecurity marketers, 4 days of sessions, workshops, and networking built for go-to-market teams in cybersecurity. Tracks for product marketing, field marketing, CMOs, and founders and CEOs. Get your ticket before prices go up on October 1st.

👉 cybermarketingconference.com

Subscribe & Review: 👉 Enjoyed this one? Drop us a quick ⭐ rating or review; it helps more cyber marketers find the show.

📩 Questions, feedback, or want to be a guest? Email: [email protected] 

Follow the Host:

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing. You can join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, on our main LinkedIn page, our Instagram page, or our podcast LinkedIn page. 

See you on the next episode!

Episode Summary:

Gianna sits down with Vab Dwivedi, VP of Digital Experience at CrowdStrike, Sandra Liu, a cybersecurity creator with over 200,000 LinkedIn followers, and Eric Becker, Enterprise Account Director at LinkedIn. They covered the CrowdStrike and Sandra Liu creator campaign, why LinkedIn reaches cybersecurity buyers differently than any other platform, how Vab thinks about measurement when the buying journey isn't linear, and why content quality will always matter more than volume.

About the Panelists:

Vab Dwivedi is the VP of Digital Experience at CrowdStrike, where he leads digital marketing strategy. Before CrowdStrike, he spent nearly 20 years in consumer marketing, most recently at Yeti.

Sandra Liu is a cybersecurity creator known as WithSandra, with over 200,000 followers on LinkedIn. She creates cybersecurity education and news content for audiences ranging from beginners to senior security professionals, drawing on her background as a security analyst.

Eric Becker is an Enterprise Account Director at LinkedIn, where he works with brands on creator and video strategies, including thought leader ads, BrandLink, and creator discovery.

Links & Resources:

Cyber Innovation Conference:

The Cyber Innovation Conference is happening October 26th and 27th in Washington, D.C. CISOs, founders, and active investors in one room, with sponsor slots purposefully capped. Society members get 10% off your sponsorship when you mention Cybersecurity Marketing Society or CMS at sign-up.

👉 https://www.cyberinnovationconference.com/sponsors

CyberMarketing Con 2026:

CyberMarketing Con is back November 15th through 18th in Austin, Texas, and virtually. 700+ cybersecurity marketers, 4 days of sessions, workshops, and networking built for go-to-market teams in cybersecurity. Tracks for product marketing, field marketing, CMOs, and founders and CEOs. Get your ticket before prices go up on October 1st.

👉 cybermarketingconference.com

Subscribe & Review:

👉 Enjoyed this one? Drop us a quick ⭐ rating or review; it helps more cyber marketers find the show.

📩 Questions, feedback, or want to be a guest? Email: [email protected] 

Follow the Host:

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing. You can join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, on our main LinkedIn page, our Instagram page, or our podcast LinkedIn page. 

See you on the next episode!

Episode Summary:

When David Politis sits down with Gianna and Charles on CyberCMO Confidential, you’re getting something rare: A CEO who loves marketing telling you exactly what he thinks when he watches CMOs operate. Why the CRO wins if you let them, why he stops listening the moment someone says they have a playbook, why the best CMOs he ever wanted to hire became CEOs. And what one engineer just built for 2,000 accounts that made him realize most companies are nowhere near what is now possible.

About David:

David Politis is the Multi-time Founder, Current CEO Coach, Founder, Not Another CEO Podcast. He founded and led BetterCloud, sold it to Vista Equity Partners for about $750 million, and was part of the early team at Cloud Sherpas, which Accenture acquired. He now advises founders and executives on go-to-market, fundraising, and company building.

Links & Resources:

Subscribe & Review:

👉 Enjoyed this one? Drop us a quick ⭐ rating or review; it helps more cyber marketers find the show.

📩 Questions, feedback, or want to be a guest? Email: [email protected] 

Follow the Host:

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing. You can join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, on our main LinkedIn page, our Instagram page, or our podcast LinkedIn page. 

See you on the next episode!

Episode Summary:

Yael Grauer won a Pulitzer and got laid off in the same year. She is a freelance investigative reporter covering cybersecurity, privacy, and surveillance. She sat down with Gianna to talk about what companies get wrong when journalists come knocking, why lying in that moment makes everything worse, and what it looks like from the other side of every pitch, every breach response, and every "no comment" that ends up in a story anyway.

About Yael:

Yael Grauer is a freelance investigative reporter covering cybersecurity, privacy, surveillance, and tech accountability. She has written for Wired, Ars Technica, The Atlantic, The Intercept, The Verge, and others. She previously worked at Consumer Reports as Program Manager for Cybersecurity Research, where she managed Security Planner, a free digital safety guide. She is part of the team behind a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into global surveillance technology conducted with The Associated Press.

Links & Resources:

Subscribe & Review:

👉 Enjoyed this one? Drop us a quick ⭐ rating or review; it helps more cyber marketers find the show.

📩 Questions, feedback, or want to be a guest? Email: [email protected] 

Follow the Host:

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing. You can join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, on our main LinkedIn page, our Instagram page, or our podcast LinkedIn page. 

See you on the next episode!

Episode Summary:

Brian Reed has been a CMO six times. He's also watched AI flatten marketing for the past two years and has said so out loud, including in a manifesto he published called AI is Flattening Marketing: Cue the Return of Mad Men.

On this CyberCMO Confidential episode, Brian, Gianna, and Charles Gold get into why storytelling and community are the two things AI cannot commoditize. Brian also talks about how he built a “crusty OT guy” persona to validate messaging authenticity, and what community-driven marketing looks like when your buyers wear steel-toe boots and aren’t online very often.

About Brian:

Brian Reed is the Chief Marketing Officer at Corsha, an early-stage OT security company focused on securing machine-to-machine communications in industrial environments. He is a six-time CMO and CPO with over 30 years of experience in enterprise software and cybersecurity, with a background spanning mobile security, DevSecOps, and now operational technology. Before Corsha, Brian served as CMO at Appdome and NowSecure.

Links & Resources:

Subscribe & Review:

👉 Enjoyed this one? Drop us a quick ⭐ rating or review; it helps more cyber marketers find the show.

📩 Questions, feedback, or want to be a guest? Email: [email protected] 

Follow the Host:

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing. You can join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, on our main LinkedIn page, our Instagram page, or our podcast LinkedIn page. 

See you on the next episode!

Episode Summary:

Gemma Goldstein had a quiet Thursday in the office, a domain someone spotted for sale, and an idea. A few short weeks later, Check Point's Exposure Management team had a browser-based arcade game live at exposuremanagement.ai with 11,000 players and a leaderboard.

The game launched as part of a broader campaign, and MQLs went up 100% that month. Gemma is careful not to credit the game alone. She and Gianna cover how the campaign came together across multiple channels, what she would do differently now, and how vibe coding an ROI calculator in an hour replaced a project quoted as taking weeks.

About Gemma: Gemma Goldstein is Head of Growth for Exposure Management at Check Point, a role she carried over from Cyberint after they were acquired in 2024. Before Cyberint, she spent three years at Envy, a B2B digital marketing agency focused on cybersecurity. Her background spans SEO, paid media, content, and creative strategy.

Links & Resources:

Subscribe & Review:

👉 Enjoyed this one? Drop us a quick ⭐ rating or review; it helps more cyber marketers find the show.

📩 Questions, feedback, or want to be a guest? Email: [email protected] 

Follow the Host:

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing. You can join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, on our main LinkedIn page, our Instagram page, or our podcast LinkedIn page. 

See you on the next episode!

Episode Summary:

Patrick Gorman started making YouTube videos during COVID to study for a certification with friends. He now has over 100,000 subscribers and runs a pentesting firm called ISP Security.

This is a replay of our Behind the Cyber Creator AMA series. Patrick and Gianna talk about how he built his audience, why having followers doesn’t automatically mean having clients, and what he learned the hard way about being a public figure in cybersecurity.

About Patrick:

Patrick Gorman is the founder of ISP Security and the creator behind Infosec Pat, a YouTube channel with over 100,000 subscribers. He has over 15 years of experience in IT and offensive security, with a background in penetration testing, network security, and digital forensics.

Links & Resources:

Subscribe & Review: 👉 Enjoyed this one? Drop us a quick ⭐ rating or review; it helps more cyber marketers find the show.

📩 Questions, feedback, or want to be a guest? Email: [email protected] 

Follow the Host:

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing. You can join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, on our main LinkedIn page, our Instagram page, or our podcast LinkedIn page. 

See you on the next episode!

Episode Summary:

Kelly O'Dwyer Manuel has been building analyst relations (AR) programs for a long time, and her first question is always the same when starting from scratch: what are you actually trying to accomplish?

She joins Gianna and Andy T to talk through what AR looks like for a small team with a small budget, why most companies pay for analyst relationships before they are ready, and what a first year program should realistically look like. 

About Kelly:

Kelly O'Dwyer Manuel is a communications and analyst relations leader with experience across cybersecurity, semiconductors, and enterprise software. She currently leads AR at NXP Semiconductors and has built programs at companies of all sizes, from startups to large public companies. Her background spans PR, AR, and corporate communications, with deep expertise in identity and access management and security.

Links & Resources:

Subscribe & Review:

👉 Enjoyed this one? Drop us a quick ⭐ rating or review, it helps more cyber marketers find the show.

📩 Questions, feedback, or want to be a guest? Email: [email protected] 

Follow the Host:

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing. You can join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, on our main LinkedIn page, our Instagram page, or our podcast LinkedIn page. 

See you on the next episode!

Episode Summary:

Jake Milstein ran newsrooms at CBS, NBC, Fox, and ABC affiliates for 25 years. He has five Emmys and strong feelings about the phrase "in today's evolving threat landscape."

It turns out 25 years of writing for people with a remote in their hand is excellent training for cybersecurity marketing. He sits down with Gianna and Charles on CyberCMO Confidential to talk about why "learn more" is a moron tease, what writing a broadcast tease has to do with your website copy, and why he now writes two versions of every press release. One for journalists. One for the LLMs that are doing the reading anyway.

Gianna finally presents Jake with his very own handmade Cybersecurity Marketing Society award, which he has been lobbying for throughout the episode.

About Jake:

Jake Milstein is the VP of Growth and Corporate Marketing at Contrast Security. Before cybersecurity, he spent 25 years running newsrooms and newscasts at CBS, NBC, Fox, and ABC affiliates across the US. He previously served as CMO and Chief Revenue Officer at Critical Insight, an MDR and cybersecurity services company.

Links & Resources:

Subscribe & Review:

👉 Enjoyed this one? Drop us a quick ⭐ rating or review; it helps more cyber marketers find the show.

📩 Questions, feedback, or want to be a guest? Email: [email protected] 

Follow the Host:

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing. You can join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, on our main LinkedIn page, our Instagram page, or our podcast LinkedIn page. 

See you on the next episode!