Next-Generation Leadership Consulting for Agencies | Save up to 30% in Operational Costs | Implement a Strong Vision in Under 3 Months | Founder @ REMODE |

REMODE has empowered 40+ e-commerce agency and brand founders to break free from the daily grind and regain control of their business.✅ Are you ready to focus ON your business and stop sweating the small stuff?✅ Is your goal to have an organization that runs smoothly without your constant involvement?✅ Do you want to achieve this fast but feel stuck on where to start?With REMODE, you’ll build an autonomous organization and unlock powerful leadership—faster than you ever thought possible.Does any of the following sound familiar?❌ Your team’s execution feels painfully slow, leaving you frustrated.❌ You feel chained to your business, knowing that time off means everything falls apart.❌ You lack confidence in your leaders to run the business for you.❌ You have sleepless nights worrying about missed growth opportunities because of the chaos.Here’s what collaborating with us will offer you:→ crystal-clear clarity→ unstoppable motivation→ sky-high engagement→ a self-reliant team→ streamlined, profitable operations→ freedom to focus on your long-term vision.Ready to break free from the daily grind and step back into the role of visionary entrepreneur? Let’s talk—send me a Direct Message.Your transformation is closer than you think—let’s make it happen.

Leon van der Laan

I work at the intersection of cyber defense, AI safety, and emerging risk, where the threats are converging and the playbooks are still being written.

My career has taken me from the Marine Corps to NSA, U.S. Cyber Command, the U.S. House of Representatives, Mandiant, and Netflix. Across every role, one throughline: understanding adversaries, building high-trust teams, and translating complex problems into strategies leaders can act on.

Today, I advise organizations, governments, and research institutions on AI governance, agentic threat preparedness, and unifying safety and security into a single discipline. I contribute to global standards efforts including the EU AI Act (via OWASP AI) and lead executive education on cybersecurity and AI strategy at SANS.

If you’re navigating the future of AI risk or security strategy, let’s connect.

Chris Cochran

How it started vs. How it’s going: Netflix Edition 🎬

Seven years separate these two photos. (Somewhere in there, my hair migrated to my beard.)

The bottom shot: Me, almost exactly seven years to the day, mere days before I actually joined the company.

The top shot: Taken yesterday, right before I stepped inside to give a presentation to the Netflix team on Agentic AI Identity.

It was incredibly surreal to be back in my old stomping grounds. Beyond the tech and the talks, the best part was catching up with old friends and seeing how much has evolved.

If you’re early in the journey: keep going folks. The long story arcs are the ones that matter. 😉

Thanks for the invitation back, Netflix.

Field CISO & VP, AI Security @ SANS | Bridging Cyber Defense and Frontier AI Risk | Ex-NSA, Netflix, Mandiant | US Marine Veteran

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Grateful to Chris Hughes for sending me a copy of Securing AI Agents.

This is a great read for anyone thinking seriously about how to keep organizations both safe and autonomous as agentic systems become real operators in our environments.

What I especially appreciated is how much of this book confirms instincts many of us have been circling, agent identity, trust boundaries, real-world deployment realities, while also pushing those ideas further with concrete frameworks and examples.

Really strong work, Ken Huang and Chris Hughes. This one will be dog-eared and referenced.

Yesterday I spent time with the Microsoft security team discussing AI agents, AI security, and the evolving reality of autonomous attacks.

Also had the honor of being interviewed by the sharp and thoughtful Eva Benn, truly enjoyed the conversation and more people need to hear your incredible story.

And a sincere thank you to Alex DeDonker for the hospitality and the invitation to speak with the team.

That's a wrap on this week’s west coast tour. We did it, Ben. Couldn't have done it without you.

Next week I will be back in the same city where I spoke at my first AI conference in December of 2019.

Can you guess which one? 🤔

SANS Institute

I’m not exaggerating when I say we’re at a turning point in how we defend, use, and govern AI. The SANS AI Summit (April 20–21) is where we are going to see all of the waves our community has been making will collide.

What to expect:
✅ 2 Days of the who’s who in AI cybersecurity.
✅ Real-world operators (no theoretical "what-ifs").
✅ Insights from the likes of Diana Kelley, Jacob Klein, Julie Davila, Bruce Schneier, Pliny the Liberator, Sounil Yu, and more.

How to join:

In-person: Arlington, VA
Online: Select talks streaming at no cost.
The stakes are rising. It’s time for defenders to find their depth.

Huge thanks to Rob T. Lee for inviting me to serve on the advisory board for this important event.

Registration is open: https://lnkd.in/g8JZ-tX4

Back again with the powerful team at T-Mobile, yesterday.

Grateful for the chance to spend a few hours with the team talking through AI security and AI identity. Two areas that are tightly connected in very real ways.

I’m excited about where they are headed and look forward to helping in any way I can.

Huge thanks to Adam Gwaltney and team for the hospitality as always.

SANS Institute

Programs like this can change a career forever.

Honored to be a small part of this amazing program.

https://lnkd.in/ghuY7wiG

Women in CyberSecurity (WiCyS) SANS Institute Foster Nethercott Mari DeGrazia Maxwell Shuftan Tyler Corcoran Kajal Shelat

Open article: Women in CyberSecurity (WiCyS) Launches AI Security Accelerator Program for Maryland Members by finance.yahoo.com

Women in CyberSecurity (WiCyS) Launches AI Security Accelerator Program for Maryland Members

Wow. What a difference a year makes.

A year ago, the question around the dinner table was simple:

Should we be using AI?

Last night in New York City, at our latest Jeffersonian Dinner, the question had evolved dramatically:

How do we govern, protect, and strategically utilize agentic systems inside our environments?

It took one year to get here.

The discussion was rich, real-world use cases, emerging control frameworks, identity challenges, risk thresholds, governance models. Leaders from different sectors wrestling with the same fundamental tension:

AI agents introduce extraordinary capability, and equally extraordinary responsibility. 

What stood out most wasn’t the technical depth (though there was plenty).

It was the shared recognition that none of us need to navigate this alone.

We are collectively writing the playbook in real time.

Grateful to learn alongside leaders who are approaching agentic systems with ambition and discipline.

Already looking forward to the next conversation.

So grateful for Paul S., Solomon S., Dmitri Zakhalyavko, Scott Thompson, Hamza Zaman, Igor Kaplun, CISSP, CRISC, CEH, MCITP, CCNA, Sandy Kapoor, Matt K., Downing McFadden, Christina Morillo, Kholofelo Mothibi, Keith Ney, Shantanu Pal, Nitin Pillai, Shiva Rajagopalan, Jeff Redman, Clarice R., Dawn Marie Berry, Isaac Salles, CISSP, CCSP, Josh Shapiro, CISA, CISSP, CISA, CISSP, Jeff Beazley, Beth Cartier, Scott Croskey, Bradford Fehnel, Ashraf Gad, John Greenough, Steve Harvey, Alex Isanov and the powerful Jessica Madonia for the time and conversation yesterday. SANS Institute

I’m honored to join Pentera’s AI Security Exposure Survey 2026 Webinar alongside Ryan Dorey, Director of Technical Advisors at Pentera, where we’ll unpack the real deal from the benchmark data revealing how organizations are navigating the security challenges of rapid AI adoption. 

What we’re seeing in the data is pretty straightforward, but some insights will surprise you:

Legacy controls are being stretched to cover AI-driven workflows.
Teams are being asked to secure systems they didn’t design and may not fully understand.
And in many cases, organizations don’t have a clear way to validate AI risk before an attacker does it for them.

In this session, we’re going to have a very practical conversation about that.

We’ll cover:

• How the benchmark was built and what 300 CISOs are actually saying
• Real examples of how AI security gaps become exploitable exposure
• Where adversarial testing fits in, across data, identity, and infrastructure

It’s about closing the gap between AI adoption and real-world security validation.

Join us by registering with the link in the comments.

Great to be back with our special operations community this week at SOFWERX for C2DS. We focused on the intersection of agentic security and prompt engineering, specifically how these technologies can be weaponized as tactical force multipliers for the mission.

As the threat evolves, ensuring our elite operators have a competitive edge is paramount. It was a privilege to contribute to the mission and spend time with the professionals dedicated to keeping this country safe.

Thanks for making this week awesome Kerry Rock, Luke Leviner, and Foster Nethercott. 

Semper Fi.

Honored to work with U.S. Special Operations Command and other mission-focused teams on operationalizing AI for real-world advantages next week.

Few things are more meaningful to me than equipping fellow service members with tools that make them faster, smarter, and safer.

Excited to collaborate with GovSmart, Inc.  SOFWERX  Rob T. Lee  Luke Leviner  Foster Nethercott Kerry Rock and the rest of the team.

Looking forward to running into old friends. See you next week.

A thoughtful The New York Times piece by Kailyn Rhone on AI and retirement planning that I was fortunate to contribute to. Link in the comments.


SANS Institute Jenn Elston

graphical user interface, text, application, email

What is your current view of AI in cybersecurity? I bet its a mixed bag. 

Foster Nethercott wants to hear directly from you. 

Make your voice heard. 

Just want the TLDR? Rob T. Lee and Foster will be hosting a livestream July 15th to cover the insights. 

Links to both in the comments. 

SANS Institute

It was an honor to hang out with my buddy Christopher Luft to chat all things AI in security.

Thanks LimaCharlie and SANS Institute for facilitating the conversation.

AI skill gaps are a real conversation right now, and Chris Cochran, Field CISO and VP of AI Security at SANS Institute, breaks it down into three practical buckets for defenders who want to stay ahead.

Start by figuring out what you can offload to AI: summarization, enrichment, repetitive tasks. Save the deterministic decisions for humans.

Then learn how to secure AI itself:

> Agent-to-agent communications
> MCP server security
> OWASP Top 10 for agents

Finally, understand governance. Not just the technical side, but what your company is actually trying to do with AI. Security practitioners who can enable the business, not just protect it, become irreplaceable.

Listen to the full episode: https://lc.pub/4s7iL4V

#cybersecurity #ai #podcast

Thrilled to join healthcare's brightest minds as a speaker at HIMSS26! Catch my session in Las Vegas this March. Join me: https://lnkd.in/gUwtgjJX This is the premier digital health conference where you can discover the latest innovations, hear from industry experts, earn CEs, and connect with peers in the industry.  #MeetMeAtHIMSS26 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition

If you have never seen James Lyne speak, you are in for a treat. James is one of the best to ever do it in security.  Not joking or exaggerating.

🙌Legit psyched🙌 to welcome The Great James Lyne back to RSAC for a keynote about “The Great Cyber Misconceptions: How Security Stories Mislead Us.” 

Cybersecurity loves a good story, but as James will discuss, many of our favorite narratives are wildly misleading. In his keynote, James will challenge the assumptions that shape modern cyber thinking:😱AI driven cybergeddon?😱Quantum bomb?😱Multi-billion cybercriminal market innovation?😱His talk will help us close the gap between perception and reality, and make better security decisions…while also having some fun. 

Learn more: https://lnkd.in/edUBuQN7

Honored to host and moderate a panel at Investment Company Institute Innovate on the evolution of the CTO role, especially as asset management continues to transform and CIOs/CTOs sit at the center of digital change.

Huge thanks to a phenomenal group of panelists who brought real-world perspective and dropped a ton of practical nuggets for the audience:
	•	Andy Konchan, Calamos Investments  
	•	Mark Lee, Parnassus Investments  
	•	Monica Khurana, Dodge & Cox  
Appreciate the partnership and support from SANS Institute in bringing this conversation to life.

The takeaway was clear: today’s CIO isn’t just running IT, they’re shaping strategy, risk posture, and competitive advantage. Great discussion, even better insights.

It's the fundamentals that will save us so much heartburn. Thanks for the oppourtunity to contribute CSO Online.

SSHStalker botnet brute-forces its way onto 7,000 Linux machines
http://spr.ly/6042huqW8

Open article: SSHStalker botnet brute-forces its way onto 7,000 Linux machines by spr.ly

SSHStalker botnet brute-forces its way onto 7,000 Linux machines

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