Dan Kennedy    

452 Followers
140 Following
553 Posts
AppDev, AppSec VP, FinCo CISO now Research. Spend my days talking to CISOs. Tweets and opinions are my own, a10wn. #infosec
Bloghttp://www.praetorianprefect.com
Twitterhttp://www.twitter.com/danielkennedy74
LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/danieltkennedy/
Publicly available researchhttps://blog.451alliance.com/author/dkennedy/

While I’ve been in the trenches for a few decades now, my feed is not one of management advice usually.

But here’s one:

Don’t be the “let’s take this offline” person, when something is getting resolved in real time with a little passion or because you don’t like difficult questions. The ball must move forward.

It’s wildly unimpressive. It’s really bad if everyone then ignores you.

If you want to schedule something in a smaller focused group, say that, in a specific way, with timing.

@danielkennedy74 Thank you, Dan, it's always a pleasure to sit down with you. This year what really jumped out to me from our discussion:
1) rising multi-cloud security pain points
2) the upsides of AI for SecOps, 3) the challenge that while it looks like AI helps junior security analysts*, senior employees who can tell hallucination from fact are the biggest beneficiaries.

*This leaves open the question of how junior security analysts tasked with using AI are ever going to get the skills they need to be well-experienced senior practitioners.

Lots of questions, not least for CISOs and how they can best achieve their business mandates.

Thanks again!

For the past three years, one of the highlights of my week at #RSAC has been joining @euroinfosec in the Information Security Media Group (ISMG) studio to talk about the intersection of my research and the security themes we’re seeing emerge at the conference:

https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/multi-cloud-security-straining-ciso-teams-a-31240

Honestly, in a sea of lame superficial AI labor replacement takes, it was refreshing to see something at #RSAC that drives at an outcome that will actually resonate with SOC folks.

“Christ you’be gotten big, Timmy. What’s that glowing yellow thing that’s hurting my eyes?”

Seen on the floor #RSAC2026, solid NJ band. Fun fact, they used my old basement TV in one of their videos. Well, fun for me anyway…
Let me Delve into this SOC2 report you just sent...

𝗦𝗲𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗔𝗜 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗼𝘅

Three years ago, early generative AI integrations in security operations platforms primarily took the form of chat interfaces within their tooling ecosystem. These interfaces enabled natural language queries, incident summarization and the potential automation of routine investigative tasks. Vendors framed early use cases around the ability to uplevel junior or Tier 1 analysts in security operations centers (SOC). Several years into broader GenAI and agentic integrations, that upskilling narrative appears displaced. Security leaders now report that the primary beneficiaries of AI-assisted workflows are senior analysts rather than junior staff. About 72% of respondents to this study note that senior professionals, who recognize hallucinations in output and can course-correct in prompts, benefit most from leveraging AI integrations. Only 28% believe junior employees derive the primary benefit, generating output with AI they wouldn’t otherwise be able to produce. The implications of this are profound in security and beyond. AI may compress the labor hierarchy by automating tasks that were once performed by trained future experts.

Human intervention in AI technology continues to be necessary for optimal results. The results from our Organizational Behavior 2025 survey are not entirely unexpected: If humans will remain “in the loop” to check the results of AI, it will be seasoned experts, humans who have built up tacit knowledge through thousands of repetitions of the work that AI now performs, who will most readily differentiate correct from incorrect results. Moreover, they can offer course correction and evaluate the results of multiple models to determine the best fit for any task. Research also suggests that giving AI models more sophisticated prompts improves the likelihood or receiving comprehensive and correct results.

AI is already affecting the entry–level hiring market, raising several serious questions. If the lower rungs of career ladders are knocked out by AI taking over tasks that were formative learning opportunities for new employees, what will replace this knowledge-creation activity? Who will be the senior employees to provide the necessary human-in-the-loop functions if people do not have paths to gain that experience? Even major AI developers have begun examining this issue. Research released by Anthropic found that programmers who rely heavily on AI assistance perform significantly worse when later asked to explain or reason about the code produced. That suggests that as automation increases, engineers must retain the ability to detect errors and guide model output. This is a skill that will erode, or may never be built up in the first place, if uncritical over-reliance on AI output becomes the norm.

https://blog.451alliance.com/security-for-ai-is-creating-an-enterprise-paradox/

At the airport:

Is this the end of the group 2 line?

“I don’t know, I’m group 5, I just get on whatever line.”
/returns to cell phone call
“So anyway, I got a full scholarship to the best MBA program in the country.”

—-

Provides some idea of how business decisions get made…

And in 'easily predictable outcomes' news, thanks again chainsaw guy, will mop person ever be making an appearance?

https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/10/doge-employee-stole-social-security-data-and-put-it-on-a-thumb-drive-report-says/

DOGE employee stole Social Security data and put it on a thumb drive, report says | TechCrunch

A whistleblower is accusing a former DOGE member of stealing a large number of Americans’ personal data while he was working at the Social Security Administration, with the plan of using it at his new job.

TechCrunch