AI Security, AI Cloud Ops & Infrastructure | ClearTech Loop

Your company has an AI governance committee. Great. But when an AI agent makes a decision that harms your business, who actually has the authority to shut it down?

And here's a bigger question: Would you even know it made the wrong decision?

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, host Jo Peterson sits down with Maribel Lopez, Founder and Principal Analyst at Lopez Research, to examine the uncomfortable reality behind enterprise AI adoption.

Organizations are moving quickly to deploy AI, but many haven't established clear accountability, reliable...

Your company wouldn't hire an employee without onboarding, supervision, or defined access. So why are AI agents being given responsibilities without those same safeguards?

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, host Jo Peterson sits down with Rasha Horn, Founder & Principal Advisor at CyberNarwhal.ai, to examine what happens when organizations deploy an AI workforce faster than they can secure it.

Rasha makes the risks remarkably relatable. From agents creating other agents to governance committees that lack operational oversight, she challenges business leaders to rethink how they manage AI security and accountability.

In This...

AI agents are moving across systems, making decisions and, in some cases, creating other agents. But enterprises still do not have consistent standards for identifying them, governing their permissions or tracing what they do.

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson talks with Rob Tiffany, Research Director at IDC, about why traditional identity and access management may not be enough for the agentic AI era.

Rob argues that the identity problem becomes much bigger once agents begin operating beyond a single enterprise. Companies need to know who an agent belongs...

AI agents are already operating inside enterprises, accessing systems, making decisions and, in some cases, creating other agents.

The problem? Many organizations still cannot answer some very basic questions: What agents are running? Who owns them? What can they access? And who is accountable for what they do?

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson talks with Michael Krigsman, founder and host of CXOTalk, about what AI security looks like when the workforce is no longer entirely human.

Michael argues that before enterprises can solve for least privilege...

AI agents are gaining credentials, permissions and the ability to act across enterprise systems. But what happens when they discover years of forgotten files, excessive permissions and data that was never secured with AI access in mind? 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson talks with longtime technology analyst and Forbes contributor Joe McKendrick about the security implications of the agentic workforce. 

They discuss: 

AI governance may exist on paper. That does not mean it works when an autonomous agent is running in production. 

Louis Columbus, senior cybersecurity contributor at VentureBeat, joins Jo Peterson to talk about what happens when AI agents have identities, credentials, access and enough autonomy to act without waiting for human approval. 

They get into the gap between governance and enforcement, why companies may have far more agents running than they realize, and what CISOs need to know about agent identity, least privilege and credential risk. 

Louis also shares a case where an AI...

Your AI agent has one job: accomplish the objective. 

It doesn’t care about your policies. It doesn’t worry about getting fired. And it may not stop when a human would. 

Joanna Wiggum calls it a narcissist. 

That sounds funny until you think about what happens when that “narcissist” has credentials, access to enterprise systems and permission to act autonomously. 

In this episode, Joanna joins Jo Peterson to talk about what AI agents are exposing inside enterprise security — weak credentials, unfinished zero-trust programs, governance committees with no real authority and security debt...

Guest 

Benny Czarny 
CEO, Founder & Chairman of the Board 
OPSWAT 

Host 

Jo Peterson 
CIO, Clarify360 
Chief Analyst, ClearTech Research 

AI agents have credentials. They access enterprise data. They make decisions. And increasingly, they can act without waiting for a human. 

So who actually owns the risk? 

Jo Peterson sits down with Benny Czarny, CEO, Founder & Chairman of the Board at OPSWAT, to talk about what AI agent governance needs to look like as autonomous AI moves deep...

AI agents can hold credentials, access sensitive data, make decisions and even create other identities. But many organizations still cannot answer a basic question: what is actually running in the environment? 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson sits down with Alvaro Gonzalez, SVP of Product and Go-to-Market at Assured Data Protection, to talk about what AI governance looks like when identity and access are changing at machine speed. 

Alvaro explains why organizations should start with three things: inventory, observability and remediation. They also discuss whether AI governance co...

The conversation around AI is shifting from what agents can do to how enterprises actually govern and secure them. 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson sits down with cybersecurity professional Marcus Cylar to talk about least-privilege access for AI agents, shadow AI, security awareness and what CISOs should prioritize as agentic AI becomes part of the enterprise. 

Marcus challenges the idea that AI automatically requires an entirely new security playbook. His argument: before organizations rush toward new controls and platforms, they need to make sure the cybersecurity fundamentals are actually working. 

The...

What if an AI agent had to earn—and keep—its access based on how it behaved? 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson sits down with Elliott Mattice, founder of Exprima, to examine trust as the missing operating layer between AI security and AI governance. 

Traditional controls can define an agent’s identity and permissions. Governance frameworks can establish policies and accountability. Elliott argues that organizations still need something in the middle: continuous behavioral trust that can raise, lower or revoke an agent’s access based on what it actually does. 

Jo and Elli...

What happens when an AI agent takes an action no one authorized? 

The answer is not, “The model did it.” 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson sits down with cybersecurity and technology executive Billy Spears to unpack the gap between AI policy and actual AI control. 

They discuss: 

AI agents are becoming part of the enterprise workforce, but many organizations still do not know where those agents are, what they can access, or what they are allowed to do. 

In this ClearTech Loop Special Edition sponsored by Okta, Jo Peterson speaks with Matthew Hansen, Regional Chief Security Officer and Head of Customer Audit at Okta, about the identity challenge behind agentic AI. 

They discuss Okta’s AI Blueprint, Okta for AI Agents, and why enterprises need to treat AI agents as first-class, non-human identities with clear ownership, lifecycle management, runtime enforcement, and a way...

AI governance is no longer just a policy conversation. As AI moves into business workflows, sanctioned platforms, employee tools, local models, agents, and third-party services, organizations need to understand where AI is being used, what it can access, who approved it, and who owns the outcome when something goes wrong. 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson speaks with Derek Fisher, founder of Securely Built, cybersecurity educator, author, and Director of Temple University’s Cyber Defense and Information Assurance Program. 

Derek brings a practical security lens to AI governance, AI agents, and third-party MCP risk...

AI agents are becoming part of the enterprise workforce, but many organizations still do not know where those agents are, what they can access, or what they are allowed to do. 

In this ClearTech Loop Special Edition sponsored by Okta, Jo Peterson speaks with Matthew Hansen, Regional Chief Security Officer and Head of Customer Audit at Okta, about the identity challenge behind agentic AI. 

They discuss Okta’s AI Blueprint, Okta for AI Agents, and why enterprises need to treat AI agents as first-class, non-human identities with clear ownership, lifecycle management, runtime enforcement, and a way...

In this ClearTech Loop Special Edition from AWS Summit New York, Jo Peterson speaks with Himanshu Verma, Worldwide Leader for Security, Identity, and Governance Specialists at AWS, about how agentic AI is changing the identity risk conversation. 

They discuss why AI agents need to be treated as non-human identities, how AWS Security Hub helps centralize identity risk management, and why multi-Region resilience matters for enterprise security leaders. 

Episode Description 

AI agents are moving from assistive chatbots to autonomous, task-executing digital employees. That creates new identity risks around permissions, visibility, accountability, and res...

Short Description 

Season 3 of ClearTech Loop kicks off with AI security architect Phil Stafford in a practical conversation about AI governance, agent permissions, fractional identity, and why MCP servers may be the next software supply chain risk hiding in plain sight. 

Episode Description 

AI agents are moving from interesting experiments into real business environments. That means they are not just answering questions anymore. They are calling tools, touching systems, inheriting permissions, and creating a new layer of operational risk that technology and security leaders need to understand. 

In t...

AI is moving faster than policy, training, and many traditional controls were designed to handle. 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson talks with Gerald Auger, Chief Content Creator of Simply Cyber, about shadow AI, non human identities, over-permissioned agents, and what AI defense means when AI systems can act at machine speed. 

Gerald brings the educator, GRC, and practitioner-community lens to the conversation. His take is practical: organizations probably cannot put AI back in the bottle, so they need to educate users, provide approved tools, bring agents into identity go...

Your AI policy does not matter much if no one understands how to follow it. 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson talks with Maybelyn Plecic, Manager of Training and Adoption at Network to Code, about shadow AI, non human identities, and what AI defense actually means when people are already using AI to get work done. 

Maybelyn brings a security, compliance, training, and adoption lens to the conversation. She is CISSP certified, AWS certified, and has spent her career helping teams strengthen security posture, drive compliance initiatives, and make technical change usable. 

<...

AI security is not showing up as one clean problem. 

It is showing up across governance, risk, productivity, identity, API security, and defense. 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson talks with seasoned CISO Patricia Titus, about shadow AI, non human identities, AI agents, APIs, and what AI defense means when organizations are trying to move quickly without losing control. Patricia brings more than 25 years of cybersecurity leadership experience across public and private sectors, including financial services, technology, and government.  

Patricia’s take is practical: shadow AI is both...

Cloud pricing can look simple until the bill arrives. 

In this ClearTech Loop Special Edition, Jo Peterson talks with Cristian Graziano, Principal Product Manager at Amazon Web Services, about AWS CloudFront flat rate plans and why predictable pricing matters for teams delivering internet facing applications. 

Cristian explains how CloudFront helps accelerate and secure applications, why customers often combine CDN, WAF, DDoS protection, DNS, logging, and monitoring, and how flat rate plans are designed to make that model easier to understand, approve, and manage. 

In this episode 

Jo and...

AI security is not only about policies, tools, and controls. It is also about education. 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson talks with James McQuiggan, founder and CISO of Apparent Security, about shadow AI, non human identities, and what AI defense means as organizations try to keep up with real world AI adoption. 

James brings the lens of an educator to the conversation. His perspective keeps coming back to how people learn, how they adopt new tools, and why security teams need to guide safe AI use instead of re...

AI is already inside your environment. 
The problem is most organizations don’t fully see where or how it’s being used. 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson sits down with Rock Lambros, CEO of RockCyber, to break down what’s actually happening with shadow AI, non human identities, and AI defense as adoption moves faster than governance. 

Why This Matters 

This isn’t a future problem. 

Teams are already: 

What does AI security actually look like inside real organizations? 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson talks with Todd Smith, SVP and Director of Customer IAM and Threat Intelligence at Ameris Bank, about shadow AI, non human identities, and what AI defense looks like in environments where identity, fraud, and security are tightly connected. 

They unpack why shadow AI is both an IT and security issue, why blocking AI tools is not a long term strategy, and how organizations are trying to bring more visibility and control to environments where AI ad...

What does AI security actually look like inside real organizations? 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson talks with Thomas Bryant, Director of Technical Marketing at Pure Storage and independent analyst and consultant at THB3, about shadow AI, non human identities, and what leaders should really mean when they talk about AI defense. 

They unpack why shadow AI is both an IT and security issue, how CISOs and CIOs are approaching identity and governance, and why AI defense is increasingly becoming a resilience question rather than just a detection one.  

In this con...

When ransomware strikes, even the most prepared organizations can find themselves scrambling—security hunting for indicators while IT races to spin up restores. It’s a recipe for confusion and downtime.

Chris Bevel, Practice Lead for Cybersecurity and AI at Commvault, joined Clear Tech Loop to break down how ResOps—the fusion of security and operations—creates a new model for smarter cyber resilience and faster, more coordinated recovery.

Breaking Down the Silos

Security and IT operations share the same goal: keep the business running...

What does AI security actually look like inside real organizations? 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson talks with Matt Sharp, Chief Information Security Officer at Xactly, about shadow AI, non human identities, and what leaders should really mean when they talk about AI defense. They unpack why shadow AI is both an IT and security issue, how CISOs and CIOs are approaching identity and governance, and why AI defense now spans productivity tools, SaaS platforms, internal environments, and third party risk.  

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson sits down with Matt Sh...

In this episode of the ClearTech Loop podcast, Jo Peterson sits down with Gerry Gadoury to talk about what AI security leadership actually requires as the threat landscape changes faster and the business pressure around AI keeps rising. 

This is not a conversation about one more security tool. Gerry brings the discussion back to risk judgment, executive alignment, and the human side of security leadership. As AI lowers the barrier for attackers and accelerates the pace of change, security leaders need to focus on real risk, not theoretical panic, while helping the business make better decisions under p...

In this episode of the ClearTech Loop podcast, Jo Peterson sits down with Fernando Montenegro to talk about what the CISO role actually looks like right now as generative AI spreads across the enterprise.  

This is not a conversation about one more security tool. Fernando frames AI as a forcing function that exposes the social structure of an organization, including incentives, accountability, influence, and how decisions get made. The CISO role has become a bridge role, and the job is more political, more collaborative, and more consultative than it used to be.  

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What CISOs miss when security only lives in features 

AI security is still getting framed like a technology problem: new tools, new controls, new dashboards, and new rules. In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson talks with Miri Rodriguez, Cofounder and CEO of Empressa.ai, about why that framing keeps breaking in the real world. 

Miri brings a people first lens to AI adoption and security. She argues that security is not just something you install. It is an environment people are willing to enter. When the environment does not feel secure, ad...

AI is getting embedded into everything, security workflows, engineering workflows, and customer facing products, often faster than organizations can govern it. The upside is real. The risk is in the assumptions leaders are making while they chase speed. 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson sits down with Margaret Dawson, Chief Marketing Officer at SUSE, for a slightly different conversation than our usual guest mix. Same three questions, but through a CMO lens shaped by decades of enterprise buying cycles. 

Margaret breaks down how security leaders can use generative AI to move beyond tools an...

AI security is getting marketed like it requires a brand-new playbook—new frameworks, new job titles, new spend. 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson sits down with Zach Lewis (CIO/CISO and author of Locked Up) for a practical reset: AI doesn’t erase the fundamentals—it punishes you faster when you ignore them. Zach breaks down where GenAI is already helping security programs today (especially tabletop exercises and prioritization), what it actually takes to embed security and privacy into AI models without slowing innovation (data classification, access controls, segmentation, documentation, least privilege), and why...

AI is speeding up both attackers and defenders. The goal is not speed alone. The goal is speed with trust. 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson sits down with Stefano Righi, Chief Security Architect at AMI, for a hot take conversation on what AI is changing inside security programs. Stefano breaks down how GenAI can move teams beyond reactive, tool centric security into anticipatory defense through predictive threat modeling, dynamic risk assessment, and orchestration. He also explains what secure by design means for AI systems, including privacy, adversarial resiliency, prompt injection, and data poisoning, plus w...

Cybersecurity has become a tool driven industry. Organizations buy platforms, stack controls, generate alerts, and ask humans to stitch it all together under pressure.  

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson sits down with Ryan Lutz to explore what changes when AI becomes part of the security workflow. Not as another console, but as an adaptive capability that helps teams interpret signals faster, prioritize more intelligently, and respond with more consistency when the volume is too high for humans to manage alone.  

The conversation focuses on three real-world th...

Cybersecurity has been trapped in a reactive cycle for years: a new threat emerges, a new tool gets purchased, and teams get overwhelmed by alerts. 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson sits down with Jen Waltz (Chief Information Security Officer at IMAJENATIVE) to unpack how generative AI can fundamentally disrupt that cycle—shifting the focus from managing tools to achieving strategic outcomes. 

The conversation goes beyond “faster alerts” and gets practical about what’s changing right now: 

AI is being embedded into enterprise tools faster than most organizations can govern it. 

Productivity platforms, security systems, and development workflows now include AI capabilities by default, often without a single approval moment or clear ownership model. 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson sits down with Nicolas Moy, Founder and CIO of LifeMark Financial and vCISO for Security Engineering at Halyard Labs, to talk about what AI security looks like in practice when it is treated as software, not as a separate discipline. 

Nicolas shares how security teams are alr...

AI did not arrive through a single decision. It crept into enterprises through productivity tools, cloud platforms, security products, and SaaS applications that teams were already using. 

Most organizations did not choose to adopt AI. They woke up and realized it was already there. 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson sits down with Travis Farral, Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at Archaea Energy, to talk about what that reality means for security leaders who are being asked to govern AI systems that are still evolving in real time. 

Travis exp...

AI has technically been around for years. What changed is not the math, it is the front door. Suddenly anyone in the organization can touch it, feed it data, and make decisions with it and that shift in accessibility is rewriting business risk.  

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson sits down with Michael Machado, CISO and Chief Data Officer at Hyland, to break down a calm, practical truth CISOs need right now. Most of the AI risk conversation is not new. The disciplines are familiar. Visibility. Data movement. Accountability. Audit trails. Resilience. What is different i...

As AI becomes embedded across security operations and business workflows, organizations are confronting a new reality. AI is no longer just a tool. It is behaving like a digital co-worker acting on data, surfacing decisions, and influencing outcomes. 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson sits down with Timothy Youngblood, a four-time Fortune 500 CSO and CISO, board member, angel investor, and adjunct professor, to explore what it really means to manage AI responsibly at scale. 

Tim introduces a powerful and practical analogy: AI as a digital co-worker with the experience of an in...

AI adoption is accelerating across the enterprise, often faster than governance and risk models were designed to support. Boards want innovation. Business leaders want speed. Security teams are expected to manage risk in environments where the technology itself is still evolving. 

In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson speaks with Mustapha Kebbeh, Chief Security Officer at UKG, about why the CISO’s role in AI is not to block innovation or own governance outright, but to lead the enterprise risk conversation that enables informed decision making. 

Mustapha shares how CISOs can help organizations understand what...