On the 22nd episode of Enterprise AI Defenders, hosts Evan Reiser and Mike Britton, both executives at Abnormal Security, talk with Joe Silva, former Chief Information Security Officer at Jones Lang LaSalle. JLL is a commercial real estate company operating in 84 countries worldwide. The company has over 100,000 employees, $20 billion dollars in annual revenue, and ranks #193 on the Fortune 500. Managing billions of square feet of property worldwide, JLL delivers a full suite of services, including — property management, leasing, capital markets, and real estate technology solutions. In this conversation, Joe dives into the realities versus the hype of AI in cybersecurity, AI’s role in shifting the balance between human judgment and automated systems, and AI’s potential to solve long-standing defender blind spots.

Quick hits from Joe:
On the new attack surface presented by AI: “If I look at how corporate functions at large enterprises, HR, finance, they were using RPAs (robotic process automations) to automate so much of this work, and now you look at AI agents as essentially hyper aware RPAs. It's a natural evolution. RPAs, which themselves created a massive attack surface and now we just start moving all of that to AI because we're completely taking the human out of the loop.”

On the increasing negative impact of AI cyberthreats: “Criminals can leverage AI to create highly bespoke and tailored fraud to individuals whose identities they can stitch together across multiple data sets. Organizations will start feeling the impact of AI abetting criminal activity, and that will raise the consequences.”

On areas that AI is moving the needle: “Gen AI is making it a lot easier for providers to make more information accessible and provide more context in tools…Where we see Gen AI being helpful is the ability to train machine learning models, and actually get more utility out of machine learning. We've been hearing ML and AI for the last 10 years as buzzwords associated with products and the utility of ML has improved due to AI.”

Book Recommendation: Five Years to Freedom by James N. Rowe

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Enterprise AI Defenders is a show where top security executives share how moves to the cloud have created an evolved threat landscape that requires new tools to protect against cybercrime. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/

Enterprise AI Defenders is produced by Josh Meer.

On the 21st episode of Enterprise AI Defenders, hosts Evan Reiser and Mike Britton, both executives at Abnormal Security, talk with Tony Taylor, Chief Information Security Officer at Land O'Lakes. Land O'Lakes is an American member-owned agricultural cooperative. The co-op has 9,000 employees who process and distribute products for about 300,000 agricultural producers. Land O Lakes handles 12 billion pounds of milk annually and is one of the largest producers of butter and cheese in the United States. In this conversation, Tony shares his thoughts on AI transforming the cyber threat landscape, the paradox of AI empowering defenders while enabling attackers, and strategies for cyber defense in an AI-driven world.

Quick hits from Tony:

On the oversaturation of AI as a marketing term: “You can’t talk to a vendor today where they don’t talk about their AI. Everybody’s got an AI engine. For me as a consumer of that technology, I go, well, show me how that AI works.”

On how AI can help address the talent shortage in cybersecurity: “We need to be able to bring in less mature or less experienced people and let them build that experience because the workforce isn’t there. I can’t go hire senior engineers all over the place because they’re not available.”

On AI elevating the nature of work in cybersecurity: “AI will reduce workload, and I think it’s going to reduce the workload that nobody wants to do anyway...It’s going to allow people to work at a higher level.”

Podcast Recommendation: SANS Stormcast by Johannes B. Ullrich

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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Enterprise AI Defenders is a show where top security executives share how moves to the cloud have created an evolved threat landscape that requires new tools to protect against cybercrime. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/

Enterprise AI Defenders is produced by Josh Meer.

On the 20th episode of Enterprise AI Defenders, hosts Evan Reiser and Mike Britton, both executives at Abnormal Security, talk with Gene Sun, Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at FedEx. FedEx is a multinational courier delivery services company with over $90 billion in annual revenue and more than 500,000 employees globally. With billions of packages delivered every year, using the world’s largest cargo fleet, FedEx uses sophisticated technology to provide a unique delivery service to customers across the globe. In this conversation, Gene discusses industry shifts from isolated point solutions to powerful, AI-driven platform strategies, AI as a growing tool for attackers and defenders, and predictions for the future of AI-powered cyber defense.

Quick hits from Gene:

On the evolving workforce adapting to AI integration: “There is some kind of fear in society that AI will replace all the human beings doing the work. I have this saying, AI will not replace your job. People who know how to use AI will replace your job.”

On consolidation and innovation in AI-driven cybersecurity: “There’s only so many players who can afford to stay in the AI race. I think only a couple of large cyber security platforms will survive and they will provide the fundamental platform for any additional innovation that will be created for security related AI models.”

On AI lowering barriers for fraud: “Cybercriminals are using AI to generate counterfeit FedEx shipping labels. Previously, to create a counterfeit FedEx shipping label you needed to have programming skills to decode our tracking numbers to be able to generate readable barcodes. Now, AI has removed those technology requirements and criminals are increasing their velocity to perpetrate those crimes.”

Recent Book Recommendation: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Enterprise AI Defenders is a show where top security executives share how moves to the cloud have created an evolved threat landscape that requires new tools to protect against cybercrime. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/

Enterprise AI Defenders is produced by Josh Meer.