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Between AI, quantum computing, and human error, cybersecurity is only becoming more important to operations.
With the rise of AI, today’s cybersecurity landscape is shifting. Modern leadership recognizes that fundamentals, including training, defense, and proactive culture, remain foundational. In this way, experts are addressing the most pressing threats.
Scarlet Risk
“There are a lot of threats coming through AI right now,” Scarlet Risk founder Peter Machias stated. “[It’s] something businesses need to be aware of.”
For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), cybersecurity feels like a luxury. Scarlet Risk aims to close that gap. Machias’ autonomous, affordable platform combines cyber defense, compliance, and monitoring tools to address blind spots, especially regarding third-party vendors.
“A lot of SMBs treat it like a checklist,” Machias said. “They know they need to be compliant, so they find the cheapest vendor, check the box, and move on.”
“With Scarlet Risk,” he continued, “the idea is to bring enterprise-level tools to the SMB market at an affordable price.”
High Touch Technologies
At High Touch Technologies, Director of Information Security Jason Fenoglio adopts a layered approach. “We speak of it as a ‘Swiss cheese’ model,” he said. “There is no control that is 100% effective—all of them have holes in them—but hopefully the layer underneath will stop the hole above and below it.”
Attackers exploit gaps, no matter how complicated the response. Layered security ensures that a vulnerability in one is covered by another. High Touch Technologies’ core service, Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR), stops about ten account takeovers weekly.
“It is incredibly effective,” Fenoglio said, “but you have to have it in place.”
As an aside, Fenoglio expressed concern about AI-powered social engineering. “[When AI gets] into a user’s mailbox, they can scan the entire box in seconds. They can determine how you talk to certain people, then take over.”
Surefire Cyber
“We are definitely seeing bad guys use AI-enabled reconnaissance,” Surefire Cyber chief delivery officer Joseph Tarraf said. “Before, they had to… do things manually.”
As AI lowers the technical barriers to launching cyberattacks, Tarraf asserted that incidents are still preventable with a basic investment in proactivity. Organizations still fall victim because of insecure VPNs or a lack of MFA, which can create easy footholds.
“And then there are leaders who rely too much on insurance,” he continued. “[They think], ‘We have insurance, why spend on cybersecurity?’”
Surefire Cyber is meeting the threat of AI and a lack of security investment from the C-suite with its own agentic tools. “We use AI on our side as well,” Tarraf said, “to analyze patterns from thousands of past incident cases and help our investigators respond faster and smarter.”
1TEN, Inc.
1TEN, Inc. founder and CEO Don Petsche argues that today’s cybersecurity threats are a leadership problem. “Attacks continue to be successful,” he said, “because they are so easy.”
Phishing attacks, especially those that impersonate higher-ups, are incredibly simple to execute. Without clarity from leadership and an investment in employee training, individuals will continue to fall victim and expose the company to risk.
“The best leaders pull their team together… to talk about the potential risks,” Petsche said. “Who owns the risk? Who manages it? Less than 10% of all companies are having these conversations, and that is a problem.”
Petsche also spoke about AI. “[It] changes the entire landscape,” he said. “They can make an email that looks just like it came from the president of your organization; no training, no skills involved.”
ZeroTier
ZeroTier CEO Andrew Gault is focused on a threat many organizations haven’t considered: quantum computing. “Google publicly said they feel everything must be quantum-resistant by 2029,” he said, “and Cloudflare immediately followed.”
“Every connection right now is being stored somewhere, [and] it is encrypted with classical encryption,” he continued. “But when the quantum computer arrives, they will be able to decrypt it instantly.”
Gault argues that nation-states are already harvesting encrypted data, preparing for a time when quantum computers could break those protections. ZeroTier’s software-only overlay network offers another path to safety, encapsulating traffic in quantum-resistant tunnels without an infrastructure overhaul.
“The actual change needed is not huge,” Gault explained. “It is a different cryptographic algorithm… They are just not used by default.”
Looking to the Future
Across industries, a common theme emerges: the organizations best equipped for today’s cybersecurity landscape are proactive, not reactive. Wherever the threat may be, an investment in security fundamentals remains the most effective defense.
