Hacker Valley Studio

A year ago, the average employee held about 30 OAuth grants. Today that number has risen to 88, and it isn't slowing down. Ron sits down with Russell Spitler, co-founder and CEO of Nudge Security, and Richard Penshorn, a senior security engineer at a top financial services company, to talk about the AI already living inside your business.

Ron, Russell, and Richard dig into why shadow AI doesn't behave like shadow IT, how one forgotten grant became the door into a real world breach, and whether AI agents should ever get access to a corporate inbox.

Underneath all of it is the one thing Russell and Richard keep coming back to: ownership. Give an AI agent access with no owner attached and it becomes invisible. Give every employee an approved, low-friction path to use AI and they stop wandering off it. Find out how you can  get ahead of the AI already running inside your walls.

Impactful Moments

00:00 - Introduction
02:00 - Busting the "shadow AI is just shadow IT" myth
03:45 - Meet Russell Spitler and Richard Penshorn
05:50 - The surprising long tail of AI tool usage
07:00 - Entertainment vs. finance: build vs. buy culture
08:50 - How 30 OAuth grants became 88 in 2026
10:25 - Why manual OAuth audits became untenable
11:30 - The Canva example: what "click to connect" really grants
15:20 - Benign vs. malicious: how a stolen OAuth grant gets exploited
17:00 - Shadow IT vs. Shadow AI: what's actually different now
21:00 - Hot take: should AI agents ever touch corporate email?
25:10 - The three buckets of AI agent discovery
27:55 - Russell's best practices for locking down agents
31:00 - Fundamentals for the next 18 months: visibility and easy paths

Links

Connect with Russell Spitler on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russell-spitler/ 

Connect with Richard Penshorn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardpenshorn/ 

Learn more about Nudge Security: https://www.nudgesecurity.com/ 

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Imagine how much investigation time your SOC could get back if the busywork just disappeared. Ron sits down with John Gillis, Staff Security AI Engineer at Adobe, who built an in-house AI investigation platform from scratch.

John's system runs on more than 30 specialized agents that reason through cases instead of following a script. In one run, that meant over 140 detections investigated in under four hours at an 80 to 85% quality rating. Ron and John dig into the hard lesson that made John rip out his own tooling and rebuild it around function calling, why "humans first" drives every decision his team makes, and whether AI SOC is actually different from SOAR or just the same promise with way better marketing.

Underneath all of it is the one thing John says decides whether any of this actually works: context. Give the AI too little and it's guessing, give it too much and it drowns just like a human would. Listen to find out what it actually takes to build an AI SOC that reasons instead of just automates.

Impactful Moments

00:00 - Introduction
02:05 - The rewind: how SOAR promised to save the SOC in 2015
03:35 - Meet John Gillis, Adobe's Staff AI Security Engineer
05:30 - What cybersecurity looked like before AI at enterprise scale
07:00 - The "humans first" strategy behind Adobe's AI investigator
09:30 - Why careless context management is the biggest pitfall in agent design
14:45 - Solving the speed problem: is it tooling, process, or people?
17:10 - From monolith to microservices: rebuilding the platform for scale
24:05 - What actually makes an AI agent's "persona" work
26:00 - John's prediction for the SOC three years from now
28:50 - The three skills every security practitioner needs for 2026
32:10 - Final verdict: is AI SOC really different, or SOAR with new branding?

Links

Connect with John Gillis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gillis/

If you're a researcher ready to make an impact, check out the announcement about Adobe’s new home for the Adobe Bug Bounty Program here: https://blog.adobe.com/security/a-new-home-for-the-adobe-bug-bounty-program

Check out Adobe’s Bug Bounty profile on Intigriti: https://app.intigriti.com/programs/adobe/adobepublic/detail

Learn more about Adobe: https://www.adobe.com/

– 

Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams

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Fresh off the showroom floor at Black Hat 2026, Ron brings back some hot takes from the crowd. Nearly every booth he visited, including the Exaforce booth, was pushing in the same direction. Trust in AI isn’t a philosophy debate anymore, it’s an engineering problem people are actively solving. 

 

Ron then catches up with Jen Easterly, CEO of RSAC, for a wide-ranging conversation on what it actually takes to build that trust. From her move out of government to her hard line on AI regulation and liability, the conversation takes an unexpected turn when Jen opens up about "cognitive surrender" and why she believes good judgment can't be automated away. Couldn't make it to Black Hat this year? This episode has you covered.

 

Impactful Moments 

00:00 - Introduction 

02:45 - Reporting live from Black Hat 2026: hot takes from the showroom floor 

05:05 - Welcoming Jen Easterly, CEO of RSAC

07:55 - A day in the life running RSAC and the Innovation Sandbox

10:00 - AI whack-a-mole and the sweet spot for regulation

11:00 - Governance vs. regulation, the EU AI Act, and state laws

13:30 - Why accountability and liability need to catch up to AI makers

14:45 - The case for autonomous patching and healing code like "The Matrix"

17:50 - The hot take Jen hasn't said before: not outsourcing our humanity

20:30 - Why in-person conferences matter more in the AI era

21:55 - Ron's takeaway: who decides when AI has earned our trust?

 

Links

Connect with Jen Easterly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jen-easterly 

Learn more about Exaforce: https://www.exaforce.com

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Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams 

Love Hacker Valley Studio? Pick up some swag: https://store.hackervalley.com 

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What if the encrypted traffic flowing across the internet right now (emails, files, logins) is already being quietly collected and stored by someone waiting for the day they can finally crack it open? That's the threat behind "harvest now, decrypt later," and it's closer than most people think.

Ron Eddings sits down with Michael Fasulo, Senior Director of Portfolio Marketing at Commvault, to talk about where post-quantum cryptography (PQC) really stands in 2026. They discuss "harvest now, decrypt later," the specific industries quietly racing to prepare, and why a commercially viable quantum machine might only be four years away. 

Ron and Michael trace the journey from a 1998 hack to today's quantum race, and the good news is there's still time to get ahead of it. Listen to hear where the real opportunity is, and how to start building your defense today.

Impactful Moments
00:00 - Introduction
01:40 - Rewind: the 1998 Deep Crack story
04:10 - Michael Fasulo and the current state of post-quantum cryptography in 2026
05:05 - Harvest now, decrypt later: do people really have the storage to do this?
06:10 - Where is this actually happening? Nation-states vs. coffee shops
08:50 - Who the real targets are: government, financial services, oil and gas
10:05 - Are everyday SaaS tools like Zoom and Gmail implicated?
12:25 - How Commvault helps organizations inventory their crypto footprint
17:00 - Trust, vendor partnerships, and the Commvault / Microsoft Sentinel integration
18:30 - Signs that a commercial quantum machine may be closer than we think
24:45 - Are we already behind? What to do starting next week
28:20 - Deep Crack revisited 

Links

Connect with Michael Fasulo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-fasulo 

Learn more about Commvault: https://www.commvault.com 

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Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams 

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What if the biggest risk to your organization isn't the device that gets lost, but the data that lives on it? Ron Eddings sits down with Jared Shepard, Founder and CEO of Hypori, whose path ran from homeless high school dropout to Army infantry to building a company that rethinks mobile security from the ground up.

Jared makes the case for something more radical than most vendors will admit: stop defending the edge device entirely, and make sure sensitive data never lands there in the first place. He and Ron cover MDM and MAM's blind spots, executive protection, and the shadow AI habits quietly becoming every security leader's next headache.

The episode also lands at a tense moment for the defense industrial base with the Pentagon having just paused third party CMMC assessments, now putting the burden of proof back on self attestation. If you're still trusting the edge device to protect you, this episode is your wake up call.

Impactful Moments 

00:00 - Introduction 
02:00 - Hack The Headlines: Top new from around the industry
07:30 - Meet Jared Shepard, founder and CEO of Hypori 
10:00 - What Hypori does and how it started 
15:40 - MDM vs. MAM: why both miss the real problem 
18:45 - Shadow AI and the security habits practitioners can't ignore 
20:30 - Collapsing the attack surface and bringing back BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) 
22:40 - The 4-gigabit-speed "parlor trick" that proves the Cloud beats your device
25:20 - What the 60-day CMMC pause really changes (and what it doesn't)
29:20 - China, stolen tech, and the rise of AI models like Mythos 
36:00 - Closing the loop on the CMMC pause 

 

Links 
Connect with Jared Shepard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shepardj 

Learn more about Hypori: https://hypori.com 

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Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams

Love Hacker Valley Studio? Pick up some swag: https://store.hackervalley.com

Become a sponsor of the show: https://hackervalley.com/work-with-us/