Zero Trust Readiness and Two RSAC 2026 Interviews from Fenix24 and Absolute Security - John Bruggeman, Christy Wyatt, John Anthony Smith - BSW #442

Autonomous AI agents are creating a new attack surface for enterprise security teams, particularly as organizations deploy agents for operational tasks such as customer support automation, data analysis, and incident response. How can we align our Zero Trust initiatives to also address the emerging Agentic AI risks? John Bruggeman, Consulting CISO at CBTS, joins Business Security Weekly to discuss how your Zero Trust readiness can also prepare you for Agentic AI deployments. Organizations are granting agents access to sensitive systems without the security controls typically required for other Zero Trust initiatives. John will help educate CISOs on what they should be doing now to get ahead of the risk, including: Agent inventory Data security controls, including data model poisoning Agent identity controls, including authorization and access levels Infrastructure security controls, including MCP servers Why More Technology Hasn’t Made Us More Secure Despite massive investment in cybersecurity tools, organizations remain vulnerable because their existing technologies are often misconfigured, poorly integrated, and disconnected from real operational risk. This keynote argues that complexity, human decision‑making, and gaps in execution—not a lack of products—are what truly empower attackers, especially as modern environments like cloud and SaaS expand the attack surface. Real security comes from simplifying, aligning, and expertly orchestrating what organizations already own, shifting the focus from buying tools to achieving disciplined, resilient outcomes grounded in breach reality. This segment is sponsored by Fenix24. Visit https://securityweekly.com/fenix24rsac to learn more about them! Downtime: The New Economic Threat Downtime is costing global enterprises hundreds of billions of dollars in losses annually. Caused by cyber incidents and software failures, enterprise CISOs are searching for strategies and solutions that will accelerate recovery and restoration of business operations after cyber disruptions render systems inoperable. This segment is sponsored by Absolute Security. Visit https://securityweekly.com/absolutersac to join The Resilient CISO Inner Circle! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/bsw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/bsw-442

Radioactive Twinkies, Cthullu, BlueHammer, North Korea, CUPs, Axios, Fortinet, Cognitive Surrender, Aaran Leyland, and More on the Security Weekly News. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/swn for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/swn-570

Security problems aren't changing very much even though security teams are. We catch up on the implications of the Claude Code source leak, the very human lessons from the axios NPM compromise, and what secure design looks like when it involves agents, humans, or both. AppSec has always celebrated interesting and impactful vulns. And LLMs are now a favored tool for finding flaws. We shouldn't forget the success and effectiveness of fuzzers like OSS-Fuzz, which has improved security for over 1,000 projects and found over 50,000 bugs. But we can't ignore the ease of prompting an agent to go find -- and exploit -- a vuln when the UX and overhead of doing so is hardly more than writing some markdown. The SDLC Blind Spot: Why Breaches Start with Identity, Not Code Developers have access to source code, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud infrastructure — and attackers know it. Target lost 860GB of source code through a single compromised credential. Recruitment fraud campaigns have pivoted from a compromised developer to cloud admin in under 10 minutes. As agents join human developers, contractors, and service accounts in the SDLC, the attack surface is expanding faster than static security tools can track. Security teams need real-time visibility beyond code and into who has access and what they're actually doing. This segment is sponsored by Apiiro. To lean more, visit https://securityweekly.com/apiirorsac. How AI-Driven Development is Reshaping the Application Risk Landscape Agent coding assistants are accelerating software development, generating more code and more change than security teams were built to handle. In this interview, Idan Plotnik discusses how AI-driven development is reshaping the application risk landscape and why traditional vulnerability management models can’t keep up. Make sure to schedule a free SDLC Risk Assessment with BlueFlag Security - 30 minutes to deploy. 48 hours to results. Please visit https://securityweekly.com/blueflagrsac. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-377

Interview with Brian Oh from FIS Global Merchant-Specific Tokenization: Making Embedded Finance More Fraud-Resistant Payment fraud has not gone away. It has evolved into a largely social engineering-driven problem that increasingly lands on security leaders’ desks. In this episode, Brian Oh from FIS Global explains how merchant-specific tokenization and virtual cards work, why embedded finance raises the stakes, and how approaches like behavioral biometrics and tokenized payments can reduce fraud while keeping checkout experiences fast and seamless. Segment Resources: FIS Global - The Future of Embedded Finance PYMNTS Article - FDIC Support Clears a Path for Tokenized Deposits to Scale FIS Global Blog - How behavioral biometrics are leading the way in secure banking and fraud defense for Digital One™ Flex clients FIS Global Blog - Inside Flex's Advanced Fraud Defense: What Tech Leaders Need to Know Interviews with Mickey Bresman from Semperis and Ashish Jain from OneSpan The Making of Midnight in the War Room Semperis is producing Midnight in the War Room, a full length feature film on cyberwar and CISO heroism and their work defending their companies against the onslaught of cyberattacks. Midnight in the War Room puts a human face on the front lines of cyber defense and will reveal the weight carried by defenders every day and why resilience must be built not only into systems, but into people and institutions. This segment is sponsored by Semperis! Visit https://securityweekly.com/semperisrsac to learn more. Why Passkeys Are Ready for Prime Time in Modern Banking Authentication has long required an uneasy tradeoff between strong security and smooth user experience. This interview segment explores why passkeys are ready now for even the highest risk banking use cases, why banks should be moving quickly to adopt them, and how OneSpan delivers the most complete, secure, and enterprise ready passkey solution on the market. This segment is sponsored by OneSpan. Visit https://securityweekly.com/onespanrsac to learn more about them! Interviews with Jimmy White from F5 and Thyaga Vasudevan from SkyHigh Security Securing AI Agents: Managing Runtime Risk in Enterprise AI Systems As organizations deploy AI agents and automated workflows, security challenges are increasingly emerging once these systems interact with APIs, enterprise data, and business processes in production. For more information about F5, please visit https://securityweekly.com/f5rsac. AI’s Security Inflection Point: Hybrid, Browser Security, and Data Compliance The rapid adoption of AI applications is reshaping enterprise security architectures. As organizations integrate AI copilots, agentic workflows, and cloud-native platforms, traditional network-centric security models are proving insufficient. This segment is sponsored by Skyhigh Security. Visit https://securityweekly.com/skyhighrsac to learn more about them! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-453

DexterBot, Darksword, Eviltokens, Tubular Bells, Claude, Drift, Gmail, the back seat of a Buick Electra, Josh Marpet, and More on this episode of the Security Weekly News. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/swn for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/swn-569

In the Security News: Claude leaks source code and new models Two really smart people say AI is finding vulnerabilities better than ever Windows is using your internet to send updates to strangers BIG-IP APM vulnerability - all you need to know Linux KVM for the win The bus factor and open source Axios supply chain breach Trimming Grub Depotting and hacking e-Motorcycles Trivy and Cisco source code leaks The FCC ban and What is a router? Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-920

Most organizations don’t fail because of technology. They fail because decision authority is unclear in the first critical minutes. “Being careful” is often interpreted as waiting for certainty, but that delay creates exposure. How should executives make decisions under pressure? Ann Marie van den Hurk, Founder at Mind The Gap Advisory, joins Business Security Weekly to discuss how executive paralysis leads to business damage. Ann Marie will discuss: Where Paralysis Actually Comes From What “Being Careful” Looks Like in Practice Why the First 20 Minutes Matter How Paralysis Becomes Business Damage Why Existing Plans Don’t Hold What Actually Fixes It Then, we rebroadcast two interviews from RSAC 2026. Autonomous Intelligence and the Future of Digital Trust AI agents are no longer experimental tools — they are becoming autonomous participants in enterprise infrastructure. Acting independently, making decisions at machine speed, and interacting directly with sensitive systems, these agents fundamentally reshape the trust model that underpins modern organizations. As AI becomes embedded across operations, security must evolve from perimeter defense to continuous, identity-driven trust. This conversation explores what it means to build a resilient trust architecture for autonomous systems — one that ensures verifiable identity, constrained authority, accountability, and governance at scale. We’ll examine how enterprises can balance innovation with control, prevent misuse or spoofed agents, and prepare for a future defined by machine-to-machine interactions. At stake is not just cybersecurity, but the integrity of digital trust itself. This segment is sponsored by DigiCert. Visit https://securityweekly.com/digicertrsac to learn more about them! Know Your AI Agents Through Visibility, Control, and Accountability AI agents are rapidly embedding into core enterprise workflows with broad access to sensitive systems and the ability to act autonomously, creating new challenges for security leaders tasked with enabling innovation while maintaining control. In this interview, Matt Immler will discuss why organizations must know about every agent operating in their environment and how to bring those agents under governance. This segment is sponsored by Okta. Visit https://securityweekly.com/oktarsac to learn more about them! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/bsw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/bsw-441

In the AI era, cybersecurity is undergoing a fundamental shift as AI agents transform both the speed and scale of attacks. In this interview, Gibb Witham, President and Chief Financial Officer of Hack The Box, explains why organizations must move beyond assumed AI capability toward measurable, validated cyber readiness for both humans and AI systems. Drawing on real-world benchmarks, agentic AI testing, and hands-on training, Witham outlines how security teams can safely adopt AI by proving performance under pressure. The discussion highlights why the future of cybersecurity depends on training, testing, and reinforcing human and AI operators together before they are trusted in critical environments. This segment is sponsored by Hack The Box. Visit https://securityweekly.com/hacktheboxrsac to learn more about them! As credential-based attacks continue to dominate headlines, many organizations are realizing that identity alone is no longer a sufficient control. This conversation explores the shift toward device-based access enforcement and why tying access to both user and device is becoming critical. We’ll discuss how this evolution is reshaping Zero Trust strategies across modern environments. This segment is sponsored by ThreatLocker. Visit https://securityweekly.com/threatlockerrsac to learn more about them! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/swn for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/swn-568

The future of secure software is going through a mix of skills expected of humans and skills files created for LLMs. We might even posit that appsec as a discipline will fade (and that might not even be a bad thing!). Keith Hoodlet describes the skills he was looking for in building teams of security researchers and why there's still an emphasis on the ability to learn about and understand how software is built. But figuring out what skills will get you hired and what skills are valuable to invest in still feels daunting to new grads and others entering the security industry. We discuss where the role of appsec seems to be heading and a few of the security and software fundamentals that can help you follow that direction. Segment resources https://bsidessf2026.sched.com/event/2E1h4/we-pwn-the-night-growing-leading-an-31337-security-research-team?iframe=yes&w=100%&sidebar=yes&bg=no https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_zLH8vuHU1XOjEyk85WecQwSByDwxAmQ/view?pli=1 https://securing.dev/posts/if-i-were-eighteen-again/ https://research.nvidia.com/labs/lpr/slm-agents/ Then, we rebroadcast two interviews from RSAC 2026. The Identity Crisis of Agentic AI Identity security is being stretched between legacy infrastructure that was never built to be secure and rapidly emerging AI agents and non-human identities that organizations are quickly adopting. As AI accelerates, identity risk grows alongside it, making agentic security fundamentally an identity challenge—because the more access AI has, the greater both its power and potential risk. In this session, Ron Rasin explores how past gaps in areas like Active Directory and machine identities created today’s blind spots, and why identity must now act as the control plane for AI-driven enterprises, with real-time enforcement before access is granted. He also highlights new innovations and partnerships enabling embedded identity controls across human, non-human, and AI identities, emphasizing that at machine speed, reactive security is no longer enough. To learn more about Silverfort and their AI Agent product, visit https://securityweekly.com/silverfortrsac. Privileged by Design: AI Agents and the New Identity Risk to Production Systems At RSAC this year, the AI conversation is getting more practical. Less “look what agents can do” and more “who’s actually in control when an autonomous system can take real actions across business apps and infrastructure.” The Moltbook breach and the growing attention on OpenClaw-style agent vulnerabilities put real weight behind that question because they show how quickly agent ecosystems can scale past oversight. Today we’re talking with Shashwath, CEO of P0 Security, about why identity and authorization are the quiet enablers of modern AI, where teams are losing control as non-human identities explode and what security leaders can do to keep innovation moving without turning access sprawl into enterprise risk. To learn more about P0 Security, visit: https://securityweekly.com/p0rsac. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-376

Interview with Helen Patton about her new book, Switching to Cyber Helen joins us to discuss her second book, "Switching to Cyber." Her first book discussed strategies for handling various stages of the cybersecurity career, while this one, co-written with Josiah Dykstra, provides a guide for switching to cyber mid-career. Check out her book, Switching to Cyber: The Mid-Career Guide to Launching a Cybersecurity Career: on Amazon on Barnes & Noble and on the publisher's website Interview with Lenny Zeltzer: Reflections on Being a CISO After a cybersecurity career in various roles, doing everything from product management to malware analysis training, Lenny spent 6 years in the CISO seat at Axonius, from near the inception of the company through its growth from its modest Series A stage in 2019 to the present, with nearly a billion in funding today. Lenny's CISO Essays: What Being a CISO Taught Me About Security Leadership As a CISO, Are You a Builder, Fixer, or Scale Operator? The Chief Insecurity Officer Interview with Alexandre Sieira: The state of TPCRM is shifting The gold standard for third party cyber risk management has long been the humble questionnaire. While we've seen security rating services companies generate scores by scanning a company's external resources. Both approaches are widely considered inaccurate for either creating trust relationships or determining the true risk of doing business with a third party. Every analysis of this problem comes to the same conclusion: without internal data about the state of systems and the security program, TPCRM can't improve substantially. Most this believe this to be an impossible problem: third parties would never share data this sensitive with a customer and first parties assume the same. What if they did? That's exactly the premise behind Tenchi Security, and Alexandre joins us to talk about how they've accomplished the 'impossible' in Brazil and aim to expand their success to the US. Resources: Thoughts from a panel discussion at a recent FS-ISAC event, shared on LinkedIn Predicts 2026: Third-Party Cybersecurity Risk Management Evolves for the AI Era (Gartner Subscribers only, sorry) Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-452