AI is accelerating attacks faster than most defenders can adapt, but the surprise is how little of that acceleration is actually new. Dustin Brown joins Owahn Bazydlo and Paul Marco for a wide-ranging conversation about agentic AI, third-party risk, critical infrastructure, and why the fundamentals still decide who wins.

The episode opens with a striking finding from the 2026 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report: less than 2.5% of AI-assisted malware observations involve rare techniques with one or fewer known malware examples, indicating that AI is currently accelerating known attack methods rather than unlocking novel ones. The panel turns that number into practical reality. Dustin, a Texas-based technology leader working across IoT and critical infrastructure, brings a defender's eye to the space where the physical and digital layers meet, while Owahn and Paul draw the line from commodity exploits to enterprise exposure.

You'll discover why agent-driven commerce is reshaping the risk surface, with an estimated 10% of transactions already originating from agents and projections pointing toward 90% within a year. The group unpacks why third-party and fourth-party risk questionnaires have become an operational burden on small and mid-market firms, why trust portals are emerging as a smarter path to vendor transparency, and why the SOC 2 attestation process forces the kind of vendor discipline most organizations delay far too long.

Paul and Owahn then widen the lens into the reality of what Dustin calls vibe-coded "plastic apps," the security debt they generate, and why AI functions as a force multiplier that rewards skilled hands and punishes unskilled ones. The conversation examines how attackers are simply running old playbooks at machine speed and machine volume, why obscurity as security no longer holds, and how observability, asset knowledge, and disciplined patching remain the durable foundation beneath every new wave of tooling.

Dustin, Owahn, and Paul also dig into the deeper shift underneath all of it: the human trade of agency for convenience, the cultural gap in AI literacy, and the growing need for personal security awareness at the same level enterprises have long demanded. It is a practical reminder that cybersecurity outcomes still trace back to intent, discipline, and preparation, no matter how capable the tools become.

Essential listening if you care about AI-enabled threats, third-party risk, critical infrastructure, or the future of agentic systems inside the business. If you are responsible for protecting people, systems, or data, this conversation gives you both the urgency and the perspective to think more clearly about what comes next.

https://www.talas.io/podcast

In this episode of Cybersecurity Perspectives, Paul Marco and Owahn Bazydlo unpack a striking data point from the 2026 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report: the median threat actor researched or used AI assistance across 15 different MITRE ATT&CK techniques in 2025, with some actors leveraging as many as 40 to 50. What follows is a candid discussion of what happens when the very frameworks defenders rely on become the roadmaps adversaries feed to unrestricted large language models.

The conversation frames a fundamental asymmetry that has always existed in cybersecurity but is now accelerating at machine speed. MITRE ATT&CK was built to codify known adversary tradecraft and give defenders a common language for identifying coverage gaps. That same catalog, once handed to an AI agent, becomes an efficient checklist for probing enterprise environments. Attackers need only one technique to succeed. Defenders need every control to hold. AI compresses the time and expertise required on the offensive side, while defenders remain constrained by procurement cycles, architectural complexity, incomplete asset inventories, and log coverage gaps that no framework alignment exercise can quickly resolve.

The episode also touches on broader industry context, including recent departures from frontier AI labs by researchers raising alignment concerns, and updated ransomware payment data pointing to manufacturing, education, and healthcare as the most frequently paying verticals. Together, these threads reinforce the central takeaway: the defender's advantage now depends less on tooling sophistication and more on operational discipline, environmental clarity, and the ability to contain a compromise before it outpaces the humans defending against it.

https://www.talas.io/podcast

Security is moving faster than the people trying to stop it - and attackers are already using AI to widen the gap. Tom Hafemann joins Owahn Bazydlo and Paul Marco for a sharp, unfiltered conversation about why vulnerability exploitation, patching, third-party risk, and AI-powered attacks are becoming harder to ignore.

The episode starts with a sobering stat from the 2026 CrowdStrike Global Threat Report: a 42% increase in zero-day vulnerabilities exploited before public disclosure. But the real value here is how the conversation turns that number into practical reality. Tom, who has spent 30 years building systems on the community finance side, brings a defender’s eye to the chaos, while Owahn and Paul break down what it actually means to operate securely when every new control seems to create three more problems.

You'll discover why access segmentation and separate admin accounts matter more than most teams want to admit, why third- and fourth-party risk is now a business-critical blind spot, and why cyber insurance carriers are so focused on vendor exposure. The group also gets into the limits of patching, the tradeoffs between security and functionality, and how organizations can prioritize vulnerabilities based on what is truly in their environment, not just what looks scary on a report.

Paul introduces what is leading AI-assisted initial access stats from the 2026 Verizon Data Breach Report, including phishing leading with 44% of initial access and vulnerability exploitation at 32%, and the conversation quickly widens into the reality of adversarial AI. The panel explores how attackers are using generative tools to produce better phishing, faster malware, and more convincing impersonation, while defenders are still figuring out how to govern AI safely inside the business.

Tom, Owahn, and Paul also dig into the deeper shift underneath all of it: the move from trusting passwords, to voice, to video, and now back to safe words and human verification. It is a practical reminder that cybersecurity is cyclical, and that the tools changing the game for defenders are usually the same tools empowering attackers.

Essential listening if you care about vulnerability management, cyber insurance, third-party exposure, or the future of AI in security. If you are responsible for protecting people, systems, or data, this conversation gives you both the urgency and the perspective to think more clearly about what comes next.

https://www.talas.io/podcast

AI watermarking, 130 new vulnerabilities a day, and a breakout time that dropped to 29 minutes, this episode shows exactly why cybersecurity now feels like a race you cannot afford to lose. Paul Marco breaks down the numbers that sound terrifying at first, then turns them into a practical framework for understanding what actually matters in your environment.

Using a new card-based format inspired by Wildcard, Paul and Owahn make the conversation intentionally unscripted and high-stakes, then use a 2025 vulnerability statistic and CrowdStrike's latest breakout-time data to uncover what defenders should really be paying attention to. The result is a fast, candid, and surprisingly usable conversation about how to stop drowning in noise and start reducing real risk.

Paul also walks through a real-world example of an organization with 2.4 million open vulnerabilities, showing how fixing process and ownership can cut that number in half without chasing every alert. The conversation then shifts to breakout time, where the 2025 48-minute average has collapsed to 29 minutes in 2026 according to the 2026 CrowdStrike Threat Report, forcing a bigger question: can human teams keep up when attackers are moving that fast?

If you work in cybersecurity, vulnerability management, SOC operations, or any role where you're trying to defend a modern stack with finite time and staff, this episode gives you the perspective shift you need. The numbers are scary, but the message is clear - you are not powerless, and the teams that win are the ones that prioritize, contain, and reduce blast radius before the attackers move again.

Essential listening if you want less fear, more clarity, and a sharper way to think about cyber defense in an AI-accelerated world.

https://www.talas.io/podcast

Black Hat’s biggest lesson this year is not about AI, it’s about control. Paul and Owahn unpack fragmented security stacks, why “agentic AI” is just the latest rebrand of old identity problems, and what defenders actually need to do to reduce risk without drowning in hype.

From the airport after five intense days in Las Vegas, they break down the real conversations happening on the vendor floor, the SMB-sized gaps that enterprise tools keep ignoring, and the one startup that genuinely stood out with file-level and even page-level encryption at a price smaller teams can actually afford. Along the way, they trace how prompt injection, model poisoning, and over-permissioned agents map back to the same control failures security teams have wrestled with for years.

You’ll hear why Paul is so done with AI being slapped on every booth and every pitch, why Owahn keeps pushing the idea that security has to be treated as a connected control web, and how both of them see the same core issue from different angles: isolated tools don’t create resilience. Standards, policy, process, people, tech, and service all have to work together.

They also dig into one of the most important shifts in cybersecurity right now - treating agents like identities, cataloging what you actually have, and building a program that starts with operations, governance, and business impact instead of chasing the newest shiny product. If you’ve ever wondered how small and midsize organizations are supposed to keep up, or how security can become a business enabler instead of a cost center, this conversation gives you a sharper way to think about it.

The episode closes on the part most people miss at conferences: the hallway conversations, random dinners, and unexpected CISO chats that often matter more than the giant booths and flashy demos. Essential listening if you care about practical cybersecurity, smarter buying decisions, and what actually works once the hype cycle fades.

https://www.talas.io/podcast

Launching our first podcast at Blackhat, where cybersecurity pros don’t just talk tech, they share perspectives, challenge ideas, and build community. Episode one drops soon.

https://www.talas.io/podcast