Guest

• Alan Braithwaite, Co-founder and CTO @ RunReveal

Topics:

• SIEM is hard, and many vendors have discovered this over the years. You need to get storage, security and integration complexity just right. You also need to be better than incumbents. How would you approach this now?
• Decoupled SIEM vs SIEM/EDR/XDR combo. These point in the opposite directions, which side do you think will win?
• In a world where data volumes are exploding, especially in cloud environments, you're building a SIEM with ClickHouse as its backend, focusing on both parsed and raw logs. What's the core advantage of this approach, and how does it address the limitations of traditional SIEMs in handling scale?
• Cribl, Bindplane and "security pipeline vendors" are all the rage. Won't it be logical to just include this into a modern SIEM?
• You're envisioning a 'Pipeline QL' that compiles to SQL, enabling 'detection in SQL.' This sounds like a significant shift, and perhaps not to the better? (Anton is horrified, for once) How does this approach affect detection engineering?
• With Sigma HQ support out-of-the-box, and the ability to convert SPL to Sigma, you're clearly aiming for interoperability. How crucial is this approach in your vision, and how do you see it benefiting the security community?
• What is SIEM in 2025 and beyond? What's the endgame for security telemetry data? Is this truly SIEM 3.0, 4.0 or whatever-oh?

Resources:

• EP197 SIEM (Decoupled or Not), and Security Data Lakes: A Google SecOps Perspective
• EP123 The Good, the Bad, and the Epic of Threat Detection at Scale with Panther
• EP190 Unraveling the Security Data Fabric: Need, Benefits, and Futures
• "20 Years of SIEM: Celebrating My Dubious Anniversary" blog
• "RSA 2025: AI's Promise vs. Security's Past — A Reality Check" blog
• tl;dr security newsletter
• Introducing a RunReveal Model Context Protocol Server!
• MCP: Building Your SecOps AI Ecosystem
• AI Runbooks for Google SecOps: Security Operations with Model Context Protocol

Guests:

• Eric Foster, CEO of Tenex.AI
• Venkata Koppaka, CTO of Tenex.AI

Topics:

• Why is your AI-powered MDR special? Why start an MDR from scratch using AI?
• So why should users bet on an "AI-native" MDR instead of an MDR that has already got its act together and is now applying AI to an existing set of practices?
• What's the current breakdown in labor between your human SOC analysts vs your AI SOC agents? How do you expect this to evolve and how will that change your unit economics?
• What tasks are humans uniquely good at today's SOC? How do you expect that to change in the next 5 years?
• We hear concerns about SOC AI missing things –but we know humans miss things all the time too. So how do you manage buyer concerns about the AI agents missing things?
• Let's talk about how you're helping customers measure your efficacy overall. What metrics should organizations prioritize when evaluating MDR?

Resources:

• Video
• EP223 AI Addressable, Not AI Solvable: Reflections from RSA 2025 (quote from Eric in the title!)
• EP10 SIEM Modernization? Is That a Thing?
• Tenex.AI blog
• "RSA 2025: AI's Promise vs. Security's Past — A Reality Check" blog
• The original ASO 10X SOC paper that started it all (2021)
• "Baby ASO: A Minimal Viable Transformation for Your SOC" blog
• "The Return of the Baby ASO: Why SOCs Still Suck?" blog
• "Learn Modern SOC and D&R Practices Using Autonomic Security Operations (ASO) Principles" blog

Guest:

• Christine Sizemore, Cloud Security Architect, Google Cloud

Topics:

• Can you describe the key components of an AI software supply chain, and how do they compare to those in a traditional software supply chain?
• I hope folks listening have heard past episodes where we talked about poisoning training data. What are the other interesting and unexpected security challenges and threats associated with the AI software supply chain?
• We like to say that history might not repeat itself but it does rhyme – what are the rhyming patterns in security practices people need to be aware of when it comes to securing their AI supply chains?
• We've talked a lot about technology and process–what are the organizational pitfalls to avoid when developing AI software? What organizational "smells" are associated with irresponsible AI development?
• We are all hearing about agentic security – so can we just ask the AI to secure itself?
• Top 3 things to do to secure AI software supply chain for a typical org?

Resources:

• Video
• "Securing AI Supply Chain: Like Software, Only Not" blog (and paper)
• "Securing the AI software supply chain" webcast
• EP210 Cloud Security Surprises: Real Stories, Real Lessons, Real "Oh No!" Moments
• Protect AI issue database
• "Staying on top of AI Developments"
• "Office of the CISO 2024 Year in Review: AI Trust and Security"
• "Your Roadmap to Secure AI: A Recap" (2024)
• "RSA 2025: AI's Promise vs. Security's Past — A Reality Check" (references our "data as code" presentation)

Hosts:

• David Homovich, Customer Advocacy Lead, Office of the CISO, Google Cloud
• Alicja Cade, Director, Office of the CISO, Google Cloud

Guest:

• Christian Karam, Strategic Advisor and Investor

Resources:

• EP2 Christian Karam on the Use of AI (as aired originally)
• The Cyber-Savvy Boardroom podcast site
• The Cyber-Savvy Boardroom podcast on Spotify
• The Cyber-Savvy Boardroom podcast on Apple Podcasts
• The Cyber-Savvy Boardroom podcast on YouTube
• Now hear this: A new podcast to help boards get cyber savvy (without the jargon)
• Board of Directors Insights Hub
• Guidance for Boards of Directors on How to Address AI Risk

Guest:

• Diana Kelley, CSO at Protect AI

Topics:

• Can you explain the concept of "MLSecOps" as an analogy with DevSecOps, with 'Dev' replaced by 'ML'? This has nothing to do with SecOps, right?
• What are the most critical steps a CISO should prioritize when implementing MLSecOps within their organization? What gets better when you do it?
• How do we adapt traditional security testing, like vulnerability scanning, SAST, and DAST, to effectively assess the security of machine learning models? Can we?
• In the context of AI supply chain security, what is the essential role of third-party assessments, particularly regarding data provenance?
• How can organizations balance the need for security logging in AI systems with the imperative to protect privacy and sensitive data? Do we need to decouple security from safety or privacy?
• What are the primary security risks associated with overprivileged AI agents, and how can organizations mitigate these risks?
• Top differences between LLM/chatbot AI security vs AI agent security?

Resources:

• "Airline held liable for its chatbot giving passenger bad advice - what this means for travellers"
• "ChatGPT Spit Out Sensitive Data When Told to Repeat 'Poem' Forever"
• Secure by Design for AI by Protect AI
• "Securing AI Supply Chain: Like Software, Only Not"
• OWASP Top 10 for Large Language Model Applications
• OWASP Top 10 for AI Agents (draft)
• MITRE ATLAS
• "Demystifying AI Security: New Paper on Real-World SAIF Applications" (and paper)
• LinkedIn Course: Security Risks in AI and ML: Categorizing Attacks and Failure Modes

Guests:

• no guests, just us in the studio

Topics:

• At RSA 2025, did we see solid, measurably better outcomes from AI use in security, or mostly just "sizzle" and good ideas with potential?
• Are the promises of an "AI SOC" repeating the mistakes seen with SOAR in previous years regarding fully automated security operations? Does "AI SOC" work according to RSA floor?
• How realistic is the vision expressed by some [yes, really!] that AI progress could lead to technical teams, including IT and security, shrinking dramatically or even to zero in a few years?
• Why do companies continue to rely on decades-old or "non-leading" security technologies, and what role does the concept of a "organizational change budget" play in this inertia?
• Is being "AI Native" fundamentally better for security technologies compared to adding AI capabilities to existing platforms, or is the jury still out? Got "an AI-native SIEM"? Be ready to explain how is yours better!

Resources:

• EP172 RSA 2024: Separating AI Signal from Noise, SecOps Evolves, XDR Declines?
• EP119 RSA 2023 - What We Saw, What We Learned, and What We're Excited About
• EP70 Special - RSA 2022 Reflections - Securing the Past vs Securing the Future
• RSA ("RSAI") Conference 2024 Powered by AI with AI on Top — AI Edition (Hey AI, Is This Enough AI?) [Anton's RSA 2024 recap blog]
• New Paper: "Future of the SOC: Evolution or Optimization — Choose Your Path" (Paper 4 of 4.5) [talks about the change budget discussed]

Guests:

• Kirstie Failey @ Google Threat Intelligence Group
• Scott Runnels @ Mandiant Incident Response

Topics:

• What is the hardest thing about turning distinct incident reports into a fun to read and useful report like M-Trends?
• How much are the lessons and recommendations skewed by the fact that they are all "post-IR" stories?
• Are "IR-derived" security lessons the best way to improve security? Isn't this a bit like learning how to build safely from fires vs learning safety engineering?
• The report implies that F500 companies suffer from certain security issues despite their resources, does this automatically mean that smaller companies suffer from the same but more?
• "Dwell time" metrics sound obvious, but is there magic behind how this is done? Sometimes "dwell tie going down" is not automatically the defender's win, right?
• What is the expected minimum dwell time? If "it depends", then what does it depend on?
• Impactful outliers vs general trends ("by the numbers"), what teaches us more about security?
• Why do we seem to repeat the mistakes so much in security?
• Do we think it is useful to give the same advice repeatedly if the data implies that it is correct advice but people clearly do not do it?

Resources:

• M-Trends 2025 report
• Mandiant Attack Lifecycle
• EP205 Cybersecurity Forecast 2025: Beyond the Hype and into the Reality
• EP147 Special: 2024 Security Forecast Report

Guests:

• No guests [Tim in Vegas and Anton remote]

Topics:

• So, another Next is done. Beyond the usual Vegas chaos, what was the overarching security theme or vibe you [Tim] felt dominated the conference this year?
• Thinking back to Next '24, what felt genuinely different this year versus just the next iteration of last year's trends?
• Last year, we pondered the 'Cloud Island' vs. 'Cloud Peninsula'. Based on Next 2025, is cloud security becoming more integrated with general cyber security, or is it still its own distinct domain?
• What wider trends did you observe, perhaps from the expo floor buzz or partner announcements, that security folks should be aware of?
• What was the biggest surprise for you at Next 2025? Something you absolutely didn't see coming?
• Putting on your prediction hats (however reluctantly): based on Next 2025, what do you foresee as the major cloud security focus or challenge for the industry in the next 12 months?
• If a busy podcast listener listening could only take one key message or action item away from everything announced and discussed at Next 2025, what should it be?

Resources:

• EP169 Google Cloud Next 2024 Recap: Is Cloud an Island, So Much AI, Bots in SecOps

Guests:

• Michael Cote, Cloud VRP Lead, Google Cloud
• Aadarsh Karumathil, Security Engineer, Google Cloud

Topics:

• Vulnerability response at cloud-scale sounds very hard! How do you triage vulnerability reports and make sure we're addressing the right ones in the underlying cloud infrastructure?
• How do you determine how much to pay for each vulnerability? What is the largest reward we paid? What was it for?
• What products get the most submissions? Is this driven by the actual product security or by trends and fashions like AI?
• What are the most likely rejection reasons?
• What makes for a very good - and exceptional? - vulnerability report? We hear we pay more for "exceptional" reports, what does it mean?
• In college Tim had a roommate who would take us out drinking on his Google web app vulnerability rewards. Do we have something similar for people reporting vulnerabilities in our cloud infrastructure? Are people making real money off this?
• How do we actually uniquely identify vulnerabilities in the cloud? CVE does not work well, right?
• What are the expected risk reduction benefits from Cloud VRP?

Resources:

• Cloud VRP site
• Cloud VPR launch blog
• CVR: The Mines of Kakadûm

Guest:

• Steve Ledzian, APAC CTO, Mandiant at Google Cloud

Topics:

• We've seen a shift in how boards engage with cybersecurity. From your perspective, what's the most significant misconception boards still hold about cyber risk, particularly in the Asia Pacific region, and how has that impacted their decision-making?
• Cybersecurity is rife with jargon. If you could eliminate or redefine one overused term, which would it be and why? How does this overloaded language specifically hinder effective communication and action in the region?
• The Mandiant Attack Lifecycle is a well-known model. How has your experience in the East Asia region challenged or refined this model? Are there unique attack patterns or actor behaviors that necessitate adjustments?
• Two years post-acquisition, what's been the most surprising or unexpected benefit of the Google-Mandiant combination?
• M-Trends data provides valuable insights, particularly regarding dwell time. Considering the Asia Pacific region, what are the most significant factors reducing dwell time, and how do these trends differ from global averages?
• Given your expertise in Asia Pacific, can you share an observation about a threat actor's behavior that is often overlooked in broader cybersecurity discussions?
• Looking ahead, what's the single biggest cybersecurity challenge you foresee for organizations in the Asia Pacific region over the next five years, and what proactive steps should they be taking now to prepare?

Resources:

• EP177 Cloud Incident Confessions: Top 5 Mistakes Leading to Breaches from Mandiant
• EP156 Living Off the Land and Attacking Critical Infrastructure: Mandiant Incident Deep Dive
• EP191 Why Aren't More Defenders Winning? Defender's Advantage and How to Gain it!