Examining the AI Paradox with Ingersoll Rand CISO Noah Davis

On the 14th episode of Enterprise Software Defenders, hosts Evan Reiser and Mike Britton, both executives at Abnormal Security, talk with Noah Davis,  Vice President & Chief Information Security Officer at Ingersoll Rand. Ingersoll Rand is a Fortune 500 global industrial manufacturing company with over 18,000 employees and 7 billion dollars of annual revenue. For over 160 years, Ingersoll Rand has been a leader in innovative air, fluid, energy, and medical technologies, providing mission-critical solutions to increase industrial productivity. In this conversation, Noah shares his thoughts on navigating the human threats of AI in cybersecurity, the duality of AI for attackers and defenders, and how AI is shaping the in-demand skills for the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.

Quick hits from Noah:

On how threat actors are using AI in new attacks: "They're going to take advantage of cyber savviness, or lack thereof. There was the one incident that happened in Hong Kong where they actually did a video conference call and it was a 25 million payout because he thought he was on the phone with the CFO and there was a video of it. And it was really convincing."

On how enterprise defenses will evolve in response to AI: "What I have faith in is that the good guys will find ways to interject, to be able to identify [malicious threat attempts], determine the patterns if it seems scripted. And give you some percentage of confidence on, ‘we think this is fake,’ versus, ‘No, that's, that's definitely your CFO.’ You might even get a copilot to have you prompt like, ‘You should ask this question to see if this is a legitimate human.’

On keeping talented security professionals engaged in their work: "It's by taking out the noise of having to respond to every little bit and automating out the high volume, low value stuff. And then what we're actually dealing with, we're laser focused on the highest risk. The highest risk is fun, because that's where you see the new stuff, [like] the polymorphic malware that makes it past a bunch of other defenses. That's what gets my team jazzed up to look at."

Recent Book Recommendations: Essentialism By Greg McKeown, Effortless by Greg McKeown, The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday, and Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

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Enterprise Software Defenders is a show where top security executives share how moves to the cloud have created an evolved threat landscape that requires new tools to protect against cybercrime. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/

Enterprise Software Defenders is produced by Josh Meer.