Three interviews: system fragility, operational clarity, and Identity for AI agents – Robin Macfarlane, Kyle Sandy, Todd Thiemann – ESW #471
Interview 1: Robin Macfarlane from RRMac Associats
The Mattress Money Principle: What a 50-Year Veteran Knows About System FragilityIn this interview, Robin and Adrian discuss how technology has evolved over the past 50 years. Despite massive technological changes over the decades: the PC revolution, the Internet, smartphones, the Cloud, and now Generative AI - the majority of financial institutions still use mainframes and midrange machines. Why?We explore the reasons why older technology persists alongside the new and the lessons retiring technologists can pass on to new generations inheriting an increasingly diverse tech landscape.Interview 2 with Kyle Sandy from Logically
Operational Clarity as the New Customer ExperienceKyle Sandy joins Adrian to discuss how prioritizing resilience affects how organizations should plan for incident response. In the past, security teams were focused on prevention and limiting breach damage. Today, boards want to know how long it will take to recover operations.The interview wraps up with a discussion of the right and wrong way to handle a breach and the three most important things every company must get right in order to handle an incident well.Interview 3 with Todd Thiemann from Omdia
AI Agents and Identity Security: How Enterprises Are Rewriting the RulesTodd joins ESW with some eye-opening survey insights on the topic of IAM for AI agents. While cybersecurity conversations about internal AI use often revolve around the SOC and security operations, Omdia surveyed identity professionals for a more holistic enterprise perspective.Unsurprisingly, AI agent use is as diverse as enterprise business units. The surprises are around where the budget comes from for these AI projects, and how authentication is handled.
Robin Macfarlane is the president and CEO of RRMac Associates, LLC. With more than 50 years of experience in enterprise IT transformation, Macfarlane has been extensively involved in disaster recover, security, data storage, and has been a key driver of innovation in mainframe modernization. Under her leadership, RRMac has helped global enterprises modernize their core systems, embrace DevOps, and prepare for the future. Macfarlane is a visionary leader who has positioned RRMac Associates as one of the top global brands in mainframe legacy and DevOps transformation.
Kyle Sandy is Director of Cybersecurity at Logically, a next-generation Managed Service Provider (MSP) and Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP). Lead by Kyle, Logically a protects over 1,000 client environments across Big 4 accounting firms, international retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and financial services. His business unit also spans 24/7 SOC operations, incident response, security architecture, and enterprise compliance.
Todd is a Principal Analyst at Omdia (formerly Enterprise Strategy Group) looking at data security and identity & access management (IAM).
He has been around the block in cybersecurity with over a decade of industry experience across a range of subjects including encryption, key management, IAM/authentication, identity security, and security operations at leading cybersecurity companies including Arctic Wolf Networks, ReliaQuest, Trend Micro, Vormetric/Thales, and Nok Nok Labs.
He was born and raised in Palo Alto, California and still lives there. For the football fans out there, one of Todd’s claims to fame is that he was the center on the Palo Alto High School football team when a guy named Jim Harbaugh was quarterback.
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