Ask five security leaders for the biggest data security challenge and “AI” is the easy answer. In this compilation episode, Ward Balcerzak talks with Dana Kilcrease, Brent Bigelow, Jason Torres, Anand Pallapalayam, and Dameon Sherman, and they go a layer deeper. The real problem is velocity. The old gaps, from unstructured data nobody can measure to assets nobody can name, are now growing at a pace that resources can’t match. The group covers why fundamentals still win, how governance turns InfoSec into a place of “go,” what data quality has to do with protection, and why “harvest now, decrypt later” should be on your radar as AI and quantum computing start to meet.
Takeaways:
Slow down and go back to first principles. New tools show up weekly, but hardened endpoints, solid processes, and a tested incident response plan shrink the blast radius when something goes wrong.
Set up an AI governance committee before you scale AI use. Define what data can go into AI, what outcomes the business expects, and back it with clear policies and education. Without that, you are running the Wild Wild West.
Get honest about your unstructured data. If you can’t see it, you can’t protect it, and you can’t keep AI from ingesting it. Stop adding storage to data you don’t understand and start discovering what is actually in there.
Treat data quality as a security control. Decide what is useful, tag it, and separate what is sensitive, because that drives your access controls and keeps you from paying to store data you never needed.
Plan for tomorrow’s threats today. Attackers are already hoarding encrypted data to crack later, and AI paired with quantum could shorten that timeline. Keep learning and keep your training modules coming, because the basics never stop mattering.
"All of a sudden these gaps and these technical debts are just growing exponentially, and it's difficult for us to keep up because the resources aren't growing along with the threat." - Dana Kilcrease
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