When security deals in absolutes, the business finds a way around it.

Bose CISO Arun Abraham joins Ash Hunt to discuss why flat “no”s create shadow IT, how security leaders can enable AI without opening the gates, and why fundamentals like data, identity, vulnerability management, and risk prioritization still matter most.

Arun Abraham on LinkedIn

Bose Corporation

The Watchtower

0:00 Are We Too Secure?

1:25 The CISO outsider advantage

5:19 Puritanism in security

6:24 How to earn trust when you tell executives the truth

8:11 Why quantitative risk beats maturity curves

9:39 The three fundamentals: detect, respond, VM

13:44 What AI enablement requires from security

14:14 The cloud playbook applies: enable or get shadow AI

15:10 The CISO who got replaced for saying no

15:49 Why Bose's security team has a backlog

19:59 The five-minute aha moment

21:34 If you don't know where your data is, you can't enable AI

25:09 The internal AI agent that replaced policy

27:22 The secure SDLC didn't look like this five years ago

29:44 AI won't invent new attacks - it'll use your deficiencies

31:04 Perfect is the enemy of good

Presented by Cyera. Produced by Mission.org.

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Is security really failing or is it our Paleolithic brains? 

It’s the 'responsibility-control paradox' eating CISOs alive

Peter Coroneos is the founder of Cybermindz.org, former head of Australia's Internet Industry Association, and one of the few voices in cybersecurity trained in both law and neuroscience. In this episode he explains why we're running paleolithic brains inside a 21st-century attack surface, why the industry's definition of 'resilience' is quietly draining its best people, and why AI is about to accelerate burnout before it eases it.

Peter Coroneos on LinkedIn

Cybermindz.org

The Watchtower

0:00 Is security really failing? Or are our paleolithic brains?

2:07 The brain in a bucket: how it all started

3:41 From neuroscience to internet law to cyber policy

4:50 Why Peter started seeing burnout in his peers pre-COVID

8:28 Alert fatigue and vigilance decrement inside the SOC

11:31 Paleolithic brain, meet 21st-century attack surface

11:55 The signal your brain never gets: no cue to de-escalate

12:09 The responsibility-control paradox that breaks CISOs

14:23 Why your brain can't tell virtual threat from physical

16:52 Stress takes your prefrontal cortex offline

18:53 Why Cybermindz stopped talking about wellness

20:00 Burnout is a lagging indicator

28:24 What actually changes inside teams that get support

28:46 Stress you can sustain if you design in recovery

38:35 Your best analysts don't lose skills. They lose access.

41:17 The AI accelerant: why burnout is about to get worse

45:44 What CISOs should do before the gap opens up

Presented by Cyera. Produced by Mission.org.

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How defense keeps up with AI, cyber threats, and private-sector innovation.

In this episode of The Watchtower, Ash Hunt sits down with Jimmy Harrington, retired Air Force colonel and former Deputy CIO at U.S. Special Operations Command, for a conversation about cyber resilience, defense innovation, and what large organizations often misunderstand about speed.

From NATO and the Pentagon to AI-enabled defense systems and private-sector collaboration, Jimmy shares what defense can teach enterprise security leaders about resilience, leadership, mentorship, and building organizations that can operate through uncertainty.

Jimmy Harrington on LinkedIn

0:00 Can organizations keep up with innovation?

1:14 Jimmy Harrington Deputy CIO

5:36 The pace problem inside defense institutions

6:50 Reframing cyber success: stop trying to stop everything

8:49 Run fast, trip less - operating under uncertainty

12:12 Threat-agnostic vs threat-specific cyber defense

14:09 Defense tech: from leading edge to catching up

15:14 Innovation theater: the $5B that never scaled

18:55 Slow is smooth, smooth is fast

21:16 Palantir, Anduril, and selling belief to the DoD

24:33 Building the plane while it's flying

27:23 Why CISOs and defense leaders don't collaborate enough

31:34 The military's leadership DNA corporate lacks

35:49 Mentorship and the replacement-first model

41:24 How leaders are actually built

43:10 The hardest part of leaving the military

46:28 What corporate underestimates about veterans

Presented by Cyera. Produced by Mission.org.

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Is AI helping us make better decisions or just giving us more data to misinterpret?

In this episode of The Watchtower, Ash Hunt speaks with Tony Martin-Vegue, founder of NinetyFive Risk Advisory and author of From Heat Maps to Histograms, about cyber risk, decision-making, and the role of AI in risk analysis.

Tony explains why security teams often have more data than they realize, but still need the judgment to evaluate that data, understand its quality, and use it responsibly.

Highlights

Connect

Tony Martin-Vegue on LinkedIn

95 Risk Advisory

Chapters

0:00 The judgment problem AI can't solve

1:24 From IT janitor to risk analyst with Tony Martin-Vegue

5:19 Explaining risk in dollars vs colors

9:35 Not enough data is not an excuse

13:50 The DBIR, data quality, and the 500-report flood

16:46 Industry reports or Twitter polls

17:39 Decision engineering: operating under uncertainty

20:35 The CISO's real job isn't stopping attacks

21:31 The most influential cybersecurity book

28:41 AI launders bias

31:49 Decision engineering at scale: agentic context across the business

39:43 Cyber risk math was invented by 18th-century gamblers

41:20 What cybersecurity needs to steal from other fields

43:44 Toyota, Taylorism, and why your heat map has to die

45:53 Where to find Tony and the book

Presented by Cyera. Produced by Mission.org.

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Identity is now the fabric that determines the viability of every business operation.

In this episode of The Watchtower, Ash Hunt talks with Valvoline CISO Corey Kaemming about how identity became the operational backbone of modern companies. As cloud, automation, and AI accelerate, identity failures don’t just create risk - they stop work entirely. They explore why identity decisions are now business decisions, how automation amplifies identity risk, and why CISOs are evolving from gatekeepers into service leaders responsible for keeping operations moving.

Chapters

0:00 Identity Now Runs Everything (Corey Kaemming)

1:20 Why Identity Suddenly Matters More Than Ever

5:40 “Attackers Aren’t Breaking In… They’re Logging In”

9:30 Identity as the Backbone of Enterprise Operations

12:00 You Can’t Just “Turn On” AI in Security

17:00 Moving Beyond Passwords - What Users Actually Want

19:20 Why Identity Workflows Keep Breaking

23:10 When Identity Fails, the Business Stops

26:00 “If You Can’t Log In, Nothing Works”

29:10 Inside a Real Identity Transformation Program

34:50 Who Should Own Identity - Security or the Business?

41:30 Rethinking Hiring, Teams, and Identity Strategy

46:15 Identity Beyond Security

Presented by Cyera. Produced by Mission.org.

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Security runs on metrics, but do those metrics reflect real risk?

In this episode of The Watchtower, Ash Hunt sits down with Wade Baker - co-founder of Cyentia Institute and longtime architect of the Verizon DBIR - to dismantle the cybersecurity metrics that feel right but consistently lead programs astray. They take down "average cost per breach," expose why MTTR makes security teams look great while 99% of their vulnerabilities sit untouched, and introduce the half-life metric that actually tracks risk. Plus: why metrics are weaponized more often than they're used, and how AI agents are (finally) democratizing rigorous risk quantification.

Key Takeaways:

- Cost-per-data-record is a survey artifact — there's no linear correlation between breach cost and records lost

- MTTR only measures the vulnerabilities you remediate — so you can post a great MTTR while ignoring 99% of your environment

- Survival analysis / half-life is the better metric — it tracks burn-down against a defined finish line, not raw speed

- Think like a general, not a sniper: zero vulnerabilities is the wrong objective; the right 80% is

- Metrics are weaponized to justify budget more often than they're used to manage program effectiveness

- You don't need a stats PhD — AI agents are democratizing rigorous risk modeling

Wade Baker on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drwadebaker/

Cyentia Research: cyentia.com/research

Chapters

00:00 Are we measuring the right things?

01:18 Which cybersecurity metrics are most misunderstood

02:48 The psychology of measuring what's easy

04:20 "We've got to measure something" — and the trap that creates

05:30 The real problem: security doesn't agree what "good" looks like

07:40 Sniper vs general: the thinking style CISOs need

09:28 Doing security things vs achieving security goals

10:25 The $215-per-record myth — and why it won't die

12:13 Metrics as weapons: the real reason the number survives

14:31 The needle-in-the-haystack reality of real breaches

15:45 Risk quantification was solved decades ago — in other industries

17:24 The MTTR indictment: measuring only what you fix

18:48 Survival analysis and the half-life metric

21:07 Fixed-speed decay: metrics as decision engineering

23:57 Event landscape vs threat landscape

27:19 AI agents as scenario-analysis partners

30:05 Democratizing risk modeling without a stats PhD

31:13 What security leaders should actually measure

34:15 Your metrics are not your boss's metrics

36:07 Data storytelling: testing a metric's "so what?"

37:03 What's next from Cyentia Institute

Presented by Cyera. Produced by Mission.org.

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Are you just avoiding a breach? Or are you prepared for one?

Dan Bowden is the Global CISO at Marsh - the world's largest insurance broker - where he protects 90,000+ employees across 130+ countries while simultaneously seeing how organizations are evaluated after cyber incidents. In this episode, Dan breaks down how regulation, insurance, and real breach data are changing the standard for what "prepared" actually means in 2026.

Dan Bowden is a seasoned security leader with a background spanning military, healthcare, and banking before joining Marsh as joint Global CISO.

Key takeaways:

- Why the gap between governance documentation and crisis culture is where most organizations fail

- How to properly engage your cyber insurance broker as a consultative security partner, not a checkbox

- What Marsh's breach data actually shows about insured companies being targeted (spoiler: the myth is busted)

- Why MFA in 2026 should be baseline - and what carriers are asking about next

- How regulatory frameworks like NYDFS are shifting from descriptive to prescriptive requirements

Guest: Dan Bowden, Global CISO, Marsh

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/danbowden

Chapters

0:00 Dan Bowden: Cybersecurity Is Not “Best Effort”

1:10 What a Global CISO Sees That Others Don’t

3:50 Why Companies Call Their Broker First During an Incident

5:03 What Real Incident Data Actually Teaches You

7:04 Rethinking Risk: Frequency vs Catastrophic Events

10:12 Why Cyber Risk Is Still Measured Wrong

11:39 Stop Letting the News Drive Your Security Strategy

14:32 Where Incident Response Actually Breaks Down

15:00 Governance vs Culture - What Really Happens in Crisis

18:03 How to Test Leadership Under Pressure

19:32 What Most Companies Get Wrong About Cyber Insurance

23:12 Cyber Insurance Is Bigger Than “Cyber”

24:11 Why Most Broker Relationships Fail

25:52 How Insurance Decisions Actually Get Made

27:53 Identity Is the Root of Most Attacks

29:46 MFA Is the Baseline - But Not the End

33:27 How Regulation Is Reshaping Security

37:52 Myth: Insurance Makes You a Target

41:31 The Future: Custom Cyber Insurance Models

Presented by Cyera. Produced by Mission.org.

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We’ve spent billions on cybersecurity. Why are the problems the same?

In the first episode of The Watchtower, Ash Hunt invites Jason Clark, CSO at Cyera, to dig into the hard truth that foundational security controls still fail in real environments. Together, they explore why identity and data remain unsolved, how rapidly changing enterprise tech has outpaced control design, and why AI is forcing the industry to rethink its entire foundation.

This episode is made possible by Cyera.

Chapters

0:00 Has Cybersecurity Failed?

1:22 Jason Clark - Security Built for Old Tech

2:48 Why Security Frameworks Keep Failing

4:58 The Pattern - We Can’t Keep Up - iPhone, Cloud, AI Adoption

7:47 Security Strategy Problem - No Data Visibility

10:02 Data and Identity Are Broken in Security

13:34 Identity Is a House of Cards

15:09 AI Will Break (or Fix) Cybersecurity

18:18 Rethinking Security - Systems and Data as Assets

20:39 Why Security Teams Clash with the Business

24:02 Why Risk Modeling Fails in Security

27:58 CISO Leadership Problem - No Business Influence

30:42 AI Adoption - Why Security Must Lead

33:17 The Future of Cybersecurity - Orchestrating Intelligence

34:07 Closing - What Comes Next

Presented by Cyera. Produced by Mission.org.

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The systems we rely on weren’t built for the world we’re running today.

Welcome to The Watchtower.

The cybersecurity podcast exploring how identity, data, and behavior now control whether a business runs - or stops.

Hosted by former global CISO, Ash Hunt, The Watchtower pulls back the curtain on what’s actually happening behind dashboards - from fragile identity systems to the real impact of AI inside the business.

New episodes coming soon.

Presented by Cyera. Produced by Mission.org.

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