Kyle Wilhoit, Technical Director of Threat Research at Unit 42 Palo Alto Networks, has an approach to leading threat intelligence teams that centers on two core practices that maintain both technical excellence and organizational trust. His "scheduling curiosity" framework dedicates one hour daily to pure research exploration, allowing him to ask "what if" questions that drive breakthrough thinking while staying grounded in hands-on technical work. Then, Kyle builds trust that operates up and out to other organizational teams through cross-collaboration, and down into his own team structure while he handles strategic business context.

Kyle also tells Ben why decision debt — the baggage from previous organizational choices — represents the biggest challenge for new security leaders. His hiring philosophy centers on identifying candidates with 60% of required technical skills plus the right mindset, using experiential questioning to screen for curiosity rather than relying on technical trivia. Kyle shares his structured mentoring approach that pairs early-career researchers with principal-level technical guides while he handles strategic business context, creating a systematic pathway for talent development and retention.

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[45:11-45:27] Use it to do the functions that you already know how to do. As an example, if you already know how to pull strings and look for any unique strings in a binary, have an LLM do that for you automatically. You already know how to do it. It's nothing that's complex.

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