Security used to be a headache. Now it is a growth engine.

In this episode of IT Visionaries, host Chris Brandt sits down with Taylor Hersom, Founder and CEO of Eden Data and former CISO, to break down how fast growing companies can turn cybersecurity and compliance into a true competitive advantage. Taylor explains why frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, and emerging AI standards such as ISO 42001 are becoming essential for winning enterprise business. He also shares how to future proof controls, connect compliance work to real business goals, and avoid the costly pitfalls that stall companies during scale.

Taylor also highlights the biggest blind spots in AI security, including model training risks, improper data handling, and the challenges created by relying on free AI tools. If you are building a SaaS product or selling into large companies, this conversation shows how trust, transparency, and strong security practices directly drive revenue.

Key Moments:  

00:00 — The Hidden Risks of Scattered Company Data

04:11 — Why Early-Stage Teams Lose Control of Security

08:22 — Compliance Becomes a Competitive Advantage

12:33 — SOC 2 vs ISO 27001: What Founders Need to Know

16:44 — Framework Overload and How to Navigate It

20:55 — Mapping Security Controls to Business Objectives

25:06 — The Gap Between Compliance Audits and Real Threats

29:17 — Startup Security Blind Spots That Lead to Breaches

33:28 — Rising AI Risks Leaders Aren’t Preparing For

37:39 — Building Customer Trust Through Transparency

41:50 — Protecting AI Models and Sensitive Customer Data

46:01 — Why Free AI Tools Create Hidden Data Exposure

50:12 — Automating Security Controls for Scale

54:23 — Continuous Compliance Beats Annual Audits

58:34 — Final Takeaways on Security, Trust, and Growth

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This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.

That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.

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IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The promise of agentic AI has been massive, autonomous systems that act, reason, and make business decisions, but most enterprises are still struggling to see results.

In this episode, host Chris Brandt sits down with Sumeet Arora, Chief Product Officer at Teradata, to unpack why the gap exists between AI hype and actual impact, and what it takes to make AI scale, explainable, and ROI-driven.

From the shift toward “AI with ROI” to the new era of human + AI systems and data quality challenges, Sumeet shares how leading enterprises are moving from flashy demos to measurable value and trust in the next phase of AI.

CHAPTER MARKERS

00:00 The AI Hackathon Era

03:10 Hype vs Reality in Agentic AI

06:05 Redesigning the Human AI Interface

09:15 From Demos to Real Economic Outcomes

12:20 Why Scaling AI Still Fails

15:05 The Importance of AI Ready Knowledge

18:10 Data Quality and the Biggest Bottleneck

20:46 Building the Customer 360 Knowledge Layer

23:35 Push vs Pull Systems in Modern AI

26:15 Rethinking Enterprise Workflows

29:20 AI Agents and Outcome Driven Design

32:45 Where Agentic AI Works Today

36:10 What Enterprises Still Get Wrong

39:30 How AI Changes Engineering Priorities

55:49 The Future of GPUs and Efficiency Challenges

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This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.

That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.

---

IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you’ve ever shipped an AI feature that looked great in testing — only to watch it behave unpredictably in production — you’re not alone.

In this episode of IT Visionaries, host Chris Brandt talks with Lawrence Jones, Founding Engineer at incident.io, about the critical gap between AI that demos well and AI that works under pressure. Lawrence shares how his team designs tools that help engineers respond faster, learn from failure, and build systems that don’t crumble when it counts.

CHAPTERS / KEY MOMENTS

00:00 - AI Chaos & The Mike Tyson Rule

00:58 - Meet Lawrence Jones of Incident.io

03:14 - From FinTech Outages to Incident Response

06:22 - The Biggest Mistake in Incident Management

09:08 - Training for Chaos: Game Day Simulations

10:31 - Inside the AI SRE System

13:01 - What SRE Really Means

16:23 - From Prototype to Production AI

20:27 - Keeping Up with AI’s Rapid Evolution

22:50 - Understanding Vector Databases & Embeddings

28:34 - The Architecture Problem: Chaining Prompts at Scale

36:11 - Measuring AI Performance & Reliability

44:02 - The Future of SRE Meets AI

52:10 - Lessons from Real Incidents

56:42 - Final Thoughts: Building AI That Works

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This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.

That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.

---

IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Every product a company ships depends on thousands of tiny decisions happening deep inside the supply chain. But most organizations are still making those decisions using stale spreadsheets, fragmented systems, and guesswork.

In this episode, we explore how AI-driven procurement intelligence is changing the game – moving teams from reactive firefighting to proactive supply chain planning.

Our guest today is Shardul Shah, cofounder of VeritosAI. He breaks down the hidden risks inside modern supply networks, why so many companies still lack real-time component and supplier visibility, and how better data can prevent shortages, backorders, and costly redesigns before they happen.

We discuss:

• Why most organizations still rely on Excel for procurement decisions
• The real reason supply chain disruptions keep catching teams off guard
• How AI and real-time data can alert teams to risks ahead of time
• The growing need for operational visibility across engineering, finance, and sourcing
• How procurement becomes a strategic advantage, not just a cost center

If you’re responsible for building products, managing vendors, scaling hardware, or supporting manufacturing operations, this conversation will change how you think about supply chain intelligence and the future of procurement.

Key Moments:

• 0:00 Who Shardul Is & Why This Matters
• 2:10 The Problem That Sparked VeritosAI
• 6:06 Why Procurement Visibility Is Broken
• 15:55 How VeritosAI Works (High-Level Overview)
• 19:40 Why Supply Chain Is So Hard to Manage
• 22:30 Identifying Alternative Parts & Replacements
• 26:43 Real Example: The Power of Component Visibility
• 29:00 The Role of AI in Modern Procurement
• 35:15 The Current State of Procurement (And Its Challenges)
• 38:50 The Biggest Skill Gap in Procurement: Understanding Cost
• 46:00 The Disconnect Between Engineering & Procurement
• 50:40 The Future: AI-Powered Procurement Command Centers

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This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.

That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.

---

IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

AI was supposed to make life easier. So why are tech teams more burned out than ever?

In this episode of IT Visionaries, host Chris Brandt and guest co-host Lacey Peace unpack the real reasons behind the burnout crisis sweeping through tech and cybersecurity teams in 2025. From the “do more with less” culture to the false promise of AI automation, they explore how overwork, layoffs, and unrealistic expectations are reshaping the future of tech work.

Topics we cover:

Why AI adoption is increasing workloads, not reducing them

How company culture drives burnout in IT and engineering teams

The loneliness epidemic in tech — and what to do about it

The generational shift changing expectations around work and life

How to build sustainable tech teams that don’t burn people out

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed, under-resourced, or caught between automation and exhaustion — this conversation is for you.

Watch till the end for insights on how to protect your mental health in tech and what the next decade of work might look like.

Watch Next: https://youtu.be/fCFs28kadw0?si=SNDAuua7IamFEr3p

Key Moments:

0:00 Why Tech Teams Are Burning Out

2:21 Is Tech Burnout Actually Getting Worse?

4:15 How AI and Automation Are Fueling Burnout

9:45 Tech Culture Clash: Old Guard vs. New Generation

17:00 Why Burnout Is Becoming a National Security Problem

22:15 The Loneliness Epidemic in Tech (and How to Fix It)

25:00 Can More Headcount Solve the Burnout Problem?

30:50 The Future of Tech Work: What’s Changing Forever

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This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.

That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.

---

IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What happens when AI stops making mistakes… and starts misleading you?

This discussion dives into one of the most important — and least understood — frontiers in artificial intelligence: AI deception.

We explore how AI systems evolve from simple hallucinations (unintended errors) to deceptive behaviors — where models selectively distort truth to achieve goals or please human feedback loops. We unpack the coding incentives, enterprise risks, and governance challenges that make this issue critical for every executive leading AI transformation.

Key Moments:

00:00 What is AI Deception and Why It Matters

3:43 Emergent Behaviors: From Hallucinations to Alignment to Deception

4:40 Defining AI Deception

6:15 Does AI Have a Moral Compass?

7:20 Why AI Lies: Incentives to “Be Helpful” and Avoid Retraining

15:12 Is Deception Built into LLMs? (And Can It Ever Be Solved?)

18:00 Non-Human Intelligence Patterns: Hallucinations or Something Else?

19:37 Enterprise Impact: What Business Leaders Need to Know

27:00 Measuring Model Reliability: Can We Quantify AI Quality?

34:00 Final Thoughts: The Future of Trustworthy AI

Mentions:

• Scientists at OpenAI and Apollo Research showed in a paper that AI models lie and deceive: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XuxVSPwW8I8
• TIME: New Tests Reveal AI’s Capacity for Deception
• OpenAI: Detecting and reducing scheming in AI models
• StartupHub: OpenAI and Apollo Research Reveal AI Models Are Learning to Deceive: New Detection Methods Show Promise
• Marcus Weller
• Hugging Face

Watch next: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plwN5XvlKMg&t=1s

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This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.

That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.

---

IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cisco’s Vijoy Pandey - SVP & GM of Outshift by Cisco - explains how AI agents and quantum networks could completely redefine how software, infrastructure, and security function in the next decade.

You’ll learn:

→ What “Agentic AI” and the “Internet of Agents” actually are

→ How Cisco open-sourced the Internet of Agents framework and why decentralization matters

→ The security threat of “store-now, decrypt-later” attacks—and how post-quantum cryptography will defend against them

→ How Outshift’s “freedom to fail” model fuels real innovation inside a Fortune-500 company

→ Why the next generation of software will blur the line between humans, AI agents, and machines

→ The vision behind Cisco’s Quantum Internet—and two real-world use cases you can see today: Quantum Sync and Quantum Alert

About Today’s Guest:

​​Meet Vijoy Pandey, the mind behind Cisco’s Outshift—a team pushing the boundaries of what’s next in AI, quantum computing, and the future internet. With 80+ patents to his name and a career spent redefining how systems connect and think, he’s one of the few leaders truly building the next era of computing before the rest of us even see it coming.

Key Moments:

00:00 Meet Vijoy Pandey & Outshift’s mission

04:30 The two hardest problems in computer science: Superintelligence & Quantum Computing

06:30 Why “freedom to fail” is Cisco’s innovation superpower

10:20 Inside the Outshift model: incubating like a startup inside Cisco

21:00 What is Agentic AI? The rise of the Internet of Agents

27:00 AGNTCY.org and open-sourcing the Internet of Agents

32:00 What would an Internet of Agents actually look like?

38:19 Responsible AI & governance: putting guardrails in early

49:40 What is quantum computing? What is quantum networking?

55:27 The vision for a global Quantum Internet

Watch Next: https://youtu.be/-Jb2tWsAVwI?si=l79rdEGxB-i-Wrrn

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This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.

That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.

---

IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cybersecurity isn’t just about firewalls and passwords anymore. It’s an all-out battle where hackers run businesses with customer support desks, insider threats can be disguised as your newest hire, and artificial intelligence is both the weapon and the shield.

In this special episode of IT Visionaries, host Chris Brandt switches roles and sits in the hot seat while Lacey Peace, host of Experts of Experience, interviews him about the three biggest cyber threats IT leaders must prepare for in 2025.

From the rise of ransomware-as-a-service to North Korean nationals infiltrating U.S. companies, and AI reshaping the entire security landscape, Chris reveals what’s really happening behind the scenes of today’s most dangerous attacks.

With stories from his career building high-security facilities — including an EMP-shielded data center buried under a mountain — Chris shares the lessons that every business leader needs to hear about resilience, recovery, and why it’s no longer a matter of “if” but “when.”

Don’t miss this candid and eye-opening conversation. Watch the full episode now and learn how to protect your organization before it’s too late.

Key Moments:

00:00: Lacey Peace Interviews Chris Brandt

04:45 Cyber Extortion and Ransomware

08:17 Supply Chain Attacks

18:20 Creating an Isolated Recovery Environment

20:08 Threat Number Two: IT Worker Attacks

22:14 The Rise of Phishing Attacks

27:26 The Evolution of Social Engineering

30:19 The Role of AI in Cybersecurity

33:01 Challenges in Reporting Cyber Incidents

33:46 The Complexity of Cyber Incident Recovery

34:45 The Role of Governments in Cybersecurity

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This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.

That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.

---

IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When your AI has to make decisions in the real world, the data you don’t have can hurt people.

DiffuseDrive CEO Balint Pasztor joins IT Visionaries to unpack the $124B data scarcity problem holding back autonomous systems — and how synthetic data (done right) can compress years of data collection into hours.

We dig into: why edge cases matter (and how to safely create them), closing the sim-to-real gap with diffusion models, preventing model drift, and building a data engine for physical AI across defense, robotics, and industrial automation. If you care about self-driving cars, drones, QA on the factory floor—or just shipping AI that survives the messiness of reality—this one’s for you.

Key Moments:

00:00 Introduction to Autonomous Driving Challenges

00:26 Meet Balint Pasztor and Diffuse Drive

01:14 The Importance of Synthetic Data

06:39 The Role of Synthetic Data in AI Training

18:07 Understanding Diffusion Models

23:28 Challenges in Real-World Data Collection

26:46 Three Steps to Improve AI Performance

32:13 Overcoming Non-Obvious Data Challenges

36:00 Balancing Data Quantity and Quality

40:28 Future of Autonomous Systems and Physical AI

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This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.

That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.

---

IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Discover how to turn decades of data into a competitive edge, build lasting customer relationships beyond the first click, and apply AI in ways that truly drive impact. Joining us is Vineet Mahajan, CTO of US News & World Report, who shares how he’s led the 90-year-old brand through a sweeping digital transformation. From rearchitecting infrastructure to deploying semantic search, generative AI, and agentic tools, Vineet explains how his team is reimagining what a legacy institution can become—and what every tech leader can take from that journey.

Key Moments:

• 00:00 Meet Vineet Mahajan, CTO of US News & World Report
• 04:45 How to Unlock the True Value of Your Data
• 09:55 Why First-Party Data Is Key to Building Customer Relationships
• 14:32 What Is Semantic Search and How Can Generative AI Improve UX?
• 18:39 How to Overcome Data Cleaning and Structuring Challenges
• 21:18 How to Evaluate Emerging Tech Trends (Like Agentic AI)
• 25:43 How to Lead Change: Data Governance and Digital Transformation
• 32:38 What’s Next for US News & World Report and the Future of AI-Driven Strategy

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This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.

That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.

---

IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.