What if the same psychology that threat actors use to manipulate their targets is the same psychology that marketers use to earn your trust? 

Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams

In 2025, out of all 70+ guests we had on our show, not one of them said they’d trust AI to run their SOC. Now in 2026, that mindset is shifting. In this episode, Ron sits down with Aqsa Taylor, Chief Security Evangelist at Exaforce, to find out what changed, and what's still standing in the way of security teams being able to trust AI agents with response. 

Connect with Aqsa Taylor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aqsa-taylor 

Is AI really coming for your red teaming job? What does it actually take to build a team that thinks like the adversary, and what happens when that team stops caring? And what do you do when you've been in this field long enough that the job that once fired you up has started to feel hollow?

In this episode, Ron catches up with Johnny Xmas, Head of Offensive Security at a Fortune 150 Global Food Manufacturer, and one of the most candid voices in offensive security, for a conversation that covers a lot of ground fast. 

They go deep on where AI actually fits into offensive security workflows, what Johnny really looks for when building elite teams, and why the career advice everyone gives early practitioners might be setting them up for burnout down the road. The conversation takes a turn that doesn't come up enough in this industry, and it's the part you won't want to miss. If you've ever felt your tank running low, this episode was made for you.

Impactful Moments

Johnny Christmas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnnyxmas/

Johnny's SEC 8-K IoC parser tool: https://github.com/johnnyxmas/its-over-8k 

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What does a calf kick have to do with vulnerability management? What can a fighter's mindset teach a security practitioner about operating against an adversary they've never faced? 

Impactful Moments

Links

What happens when AI writes all the code and nobody reads it? What if the security prompt you trusted still produced software designed to leak your secrets? And who exactly is on the hook when an AI-generated application takes down your company?

In this episode, Ron sits down with returning guest Tanya Janca, Secure Coding Trainer at SheHacksPurple Consulting, to dig into one of the most underestimated risks in software development today: vibe coding. 

Tanya breaks down what vibe coding actually means, why AI trained on the internet's worst repositories is quietly baking the OWASP Top 10 into every app being built, and what her AI-powered secure coding prompt library can do to help. This is a candid, practical, and community-driven episode, the kind that'll make you want to audit your vibe code-a-thon project before it ever touches production.

Impactful Moments

Connect with our guest, Tanya Janca, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanya-janca

Get Tanya's free secure coding guideline: https://securecodingguideline.com

Subscribe to Tanya’s AI Secure Coding Prompt Library: https://securemyvibe.ca

Access Tanya's Newsletter & Free Monthly Training: https://newsletter.shehackspurple.ca

Connect with Tanya across all social channels: @shehackspurple

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Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams 

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What if the most sophisticated attack has nothing to do with your firewall? In a world where AI can clone voices, re-lip-sync politicians, and spread a fake newscast to 200,000 people in days, the real target has always been your brain.

Ron sits down with Perry Carpenter, Chief Deception Strategist at KnowBe4, to unpack why we're still getting fooled in 2026  and what we can actually do about it. Perry gets into the neuroscience behind why our brains are wired the way they are, how attackers exploit that, and what it really takes to build better instincts in a world full of AI-generated content. You'll also want to stick around for the live demos, where Perry breaks down why they worked and how to spot the tells. 

Impactful Moments

Connect with our guest, Perry Carpenter, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/perrycarpenter

Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams 

Love Hacker Valley Studio? Pick up some swag: https://store.hackervalley.com 

Become a sponsor of the show: https://hackervalley.com/work-with-us/

Right now, someone in your organization is probably feeding sensitive data into an AI system that nobody approved. So when something goes wrong, who's responsible? And more critically, do you even have a policy in place to answer that question?

Ron Eddings sits down with his Hacker Valley co-founder, Chris Cochran, now serving as SANS Field CISO and VP of AI Security, to talk about his freshly released SANS AI Security Maturity Model, a practical framework built for security leaders who need to stop philosophizing and start making decisions. 

They cover the three pillars of AI security maturity: utilizing AI for defense, protecting AI itself, and governing it across the organization. Chris then gets real about where most enterprises actually stand (hint: not as far along as they think). Listen for a conversation that meets you wherever you are: skeptic, early adopter, or somewhere in between.

00:00 - Introduction 

03:00 - Chris Cochran: from Co-Founder to SANS Field CISO 

04:20 - Your board is pushing AI before security is ready 

06:00 - Tiers of AI uses: summarization to full automation 

07:50 - When AI shouldn't make the final call 

10:10 - Bite-sized AI: starting small in the enterprise 

11:45 - Introducing the SANS AI Security Maturity Model 

13:20 - You can no longer afford to be an AI skeptic 

16:30 - Three buckets: utilize, protect, and govern AI 

18:50 - Fact or Cap: what level of maturity is your enterprise? 

21:00 - Retroactive vendor risk and the AI explosion 

23:05 - Agentic Identity: workforce, non-human, and beyond 

25:00 - What works in the agentic identity space? 

27:05 - Blockchain for agent identity: promising or hype? 

29:00 - A Message for the next generation of practitioners 

31:30 - Ron's closing take: who owns your AI policy?

Connect with Chris Cochran on LinkedIn: ​​https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrishvm/

Download the SANS AI Security Maturity Model: https://www.sans.org/mlp/2026-ai-security-maturity-model-ebook

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Mythos just found 30,000 new vulnerabilities, and now every security team is asking the same question: what actually matters?

In this episode, Ron Eddings sits down with Dan Pagel, CEO at Brinqa, and Brad Hibbert COO & CSO at Brinqa, to break down the Anthropic Mythos moment that rattled the security industry. From the panic of millions of new findings dropping overnight to the strategy of narrowing them down to the 50 that actually matter in YOUR environment, this episode is a masterclass in exposure management at machine speed.

Dan and Brad share how Brinqa helps organizations make sense of massive volumes of findings, correlating data across 260+ connectors, enriching vulnerability context, and delivering clear, explainable actions to IT operations teams.

They also tackle the bigger question: how do you build enough trust in AI to let it take autonomous action on your behalf? The answer starts with better data, better explainability, and knowing when to keep humans in (or on) the loop.

00:00 - Introduction

02:00 - What just happened? Breaking down the Anthropic Mythos moment

04:10 - Why most new findings don’t apply to your environment

07:12 - What Mythos means to the broader market

09:09 - Why AI-driven discovery isn’t slowing down

11:00 - The gap between security and IT ops: how explainability closes it

13:38 - How fast you should go through findings 

15:53 - Why MTTR is the wrong metric and what businesses actually care about

18:03 - Why real-time visibility is replacing scheduled scanning

19:50 - Human IN the loop vs. human ON the loop

22:14 - What happens when AI hallucinates? 

27:20 - Why we’re over and under-estimating the impact of AI

29:54 - The immediate win Brinqa achieves for its customers

31:50 - What CISOs are really asking now: "What does good look like?"

Connect with our guest, Dan Pagel, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpagel/

Connect with our guest, Brad Hibbert, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradhibbert/

Learn more about Brinqa: https://www.brinqa.com/

Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams

Love Hacker Valley Studio? Pick up some swag: https://store.hackervalley.com

SOAR promised to close the loop in the SOC and fell flat. Agentic AI is finally delivering what a decade of playbooks couldn’t.

Impactful Moments

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In 2025, Torq brought a monster truck to RSAC. And Don Jeter, Torq's CMO, will be the first to tell you: nobody's buying an AI SOC platform because of a grave digger in the booth.

In this episode, Ron sits down with Don to discuss what Torq is actually doing in a category packed with 60 near-identical vendors, and why "the epidemic of sameness" is the real threat to every cybersecurity brand right now. Don explains why Torq builds everything in-house, why he starts every strategy by listening instead of pitching the product, and why the only differentiator left in cyber marketing is how much you genuinely care. It's a conversation about brand, but it's really a conversation about trust, community, and what it takes to make a CISO text you back.

Impactful Moments