Podcasts about brand stories

Build Your Brand Your brand is about standing out, not just getting noticed. In this compelling episode of Influential Voices of Authority, host Erik K. Johnson sits down with distinguished branding expert Gerry Foster. Together, they unravel the real secrets to building an unmistakable authority brand that attracts clients, creates opportunity, and establishes thought leadership... especially for coaches, consultants, and service-based entrepreneurs eager to escape obscurity.   Important Links: Connect with Gerry: www.gerryfosterbranding.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerryfoster/ https://www.facebook.com/gerry.foster.397 https://www.instagram.com/gerryfosterbigbrandman/ https://www.youtube.com/@GerryFosterBranding   Subscribe to the podcast: Apple Podcasts: http://www.PodcastTalentCoach.com/apple Spotify: http://www.PodcastTalentCoach.com/spotify Website: http://www.PodcastTalentCoach.com/podcasts   Episode Segments: 00:00 Welcome and Introduction to Gerry Foster 00:23 Launching the Big Brand Formula Podcast 01:12 How Podcasting Signals Authority 02:04 From Service to Authority Branding 03:00 Making Yourself Memorable 04:05 Gerry's Branding Roots: USC, P&G, and Going Solo 05:15 Confidence Beyond Corporate Backing 06:13 Learning Through Adversity and Bankruptcy 08:04 Creating the Big Brand Formula and Bootcamp 09:28 The Costly Myth of Visibility Without Differentiation 10:15 Transforming a Health Coach's Brand Story 11:13 Branding the "Invisible" to Attract More Clients 12:28 Uncovering Genius and Frameworks for Authority 13:52 Get Known, Get Found, Get Paid—The True Branding Sequence 15:37 The Right Sequence: Brand, Market, Sell 16:32 Deep-Dive Identity Work for Clarity and Confidence 17:05 Helping Energy Healers Find Their Unique Value 18:43 The Secret Sauce: Purpose Before Marketing 20:12 Crafting a "Me Only" Statement 22:11 Beware of "Me Too"—The Power of Category of One 22:33 Harnessing AI as a Supplement, Not a Solution 23:47 The Big Brand Quiz: A Game-Changer for Entrepreneurs 25:51 Lessons from Three Bankruptcies: Seek Wisdom Early 27:17 Why Corporate Branding Doesn't Translate to Services 28:00 The Power of Visibility Through Podcasting and Stages 28:47 Closing Thoughts and Next Steps   Key Takeaways: - Authority Begins with Differentiation Gerry Foster reveals that successful entrepreneurs become category leaders by uncovering what truly makes them unique, not by copying industry giants or relying solely on visibility. Standing out is more important than simply being seen.   - Podcasting as an Authority Amplifier A podcast is more than content—it signals expertise, builds trust, and becomes an entry point for future clients and speaking opportunities. Gerry shares how his own podcast, the Big Brand Formula, consistently attracted attention and grew his authority.   - Overcoming the Invisible Barrier Branding services, not just products, requires identifying "the invisible"—your values, delivery framework, and client impact. The right brand inspires marketing that actually works.   - From Crisis to Clarity Three bankruptcies didn't break Gerry. Instead, they pushed him to develop frameworks, boot camps, and a proven system for helping other entrepreneurs blaze their path to authority.   - Actionable Tools for Brand Builders Gerry's free online tool, the Big Brand Quiz, gives instant feedback on 25 critical branding elements so you can spot opportunities and blind spots for your business.   Episode Highlights: Why respected experts are still overlooked and how to shift from being "one of many" to "the one" clients choose Real-life client transformations, like the health coach and the energy healer, who broke through crowded markets using Gerry's authority branding method Common branding mistakes: Visibility vs. Differentiation, following product branding strategies, and the danger of undervaluing your own story   Discover your unique brand strengths Take Gerry Foster's Big Brand Quiz now and identify exactly where you stand in your brand journey. Take the Brand Quiz here: Website: https://bigbrandquiz.com   Ready to strategically grow your podcast authority? Want to turn your content and voice into a true authority engine?   Apply for your Podcast Authority Audit with Erik: https://podcasttalentcoach.com/coaching   Next Week: We'll talk with Vocal Leadership and Communication Coach Dr. Leslie Baylis Davis. She will give you five keys to radiate authority every time you speak.

Cybersecurity assurance was supposed to give boards, regulators, customers, and partners a clear answer to one question: can the security of the organizations they depend on actually be trusted? In 2026, that answer is harder than ever to come by. Supply chains are sprawling, attackers are pivoting through third parties, and too many assurance reports still rely on questionnaires, self-attestations, and frameworks that have not kept pace with the threat landscape. The 2026 HITRUST Trust Report calls that gap what it is: a Trust Crisis. In this Brand Spotlight, Vincent Bennekers, VP of Quality at HITRUST, walks through what four years of performance data across thousands of certified environments now show: 99.62% of HITRUST-certified environments remained breach-free in 2025. That stands in stark contrast to industry surveys reporting that more than 40% of organizations have experienced a breach. Vincent Bennekers is direct on why the numbers hold up: prescriptive controls, a centralized quality review, and an assurance methodology built for measurable outcomes rather than checkbox compliance. Healthcare makes the point even sharper. HITRUST examined the top fifty breaches on the HHS OCR breach portal, the public listing some in the industry refer to as the wall of shame. None of them occurred in a HITRUST-certified environment. For an industry that consistently ranks as the most breached and the most expensive to breach, that is a signal worth pausing on. Quality of the report itself matters as much as the framework behind it. Vincent Bennekers describes a layered review model with automated and manual checks, independent reviewers, and centralized HITRUST quality assurance prior to issuance. Every certification HITRUST issues goes through that same review. Stakeholders consuming any other assurance report should be asking exactly how its integrity is being ensured, and what is actually behind the stamp. Supply chain risk is the throughline. The 2025 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found third-party-involved breaches doubled, climbing from 15% to 30%. HITRUST requires service provider coverage, mandatory in the r2 assessment and optional but heavily adopted in the e1 and i1, where over 80% of organizations are choosing to address service provider controls thanks to a streamlined inheritance model. The report closes with a five-step roadmap for stakeholders: shift from flexible compliance to threat-intelligent assurance, verify assurance report integrity, reduce supply chain exposure, secure AI implementations through prescriptive controls, and reassess the definition of good information security assurance. Vincent Bennekers is clear that AI belongs in this conversation now, with HITRUST offering AI certification to address risks across data protection, model integrity, and automated decision-making. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Vincent Bennekers, VP of Quality at HITRUST LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-bennekers-a0b3201/ RESOURCES Learn more about HITRUST: https://hitrustalliance.net/ Download the 2026 HITRUST Trust Report: https://hitrustalliance.net/trust-report Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Vincent Bennekers, HITRUST, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand spotlight, 2026 HITRUST Trust Report, trust crisis, cybersecurity assurance, third-party risk, supply chain security, healthcare cybersecurity, HHS OCR breach portal, HITRUST certification, r2 certification, e1 certification, i1 certification, threat-intelligent assurance, AI security certification, information risk management Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Agentic AI was the theme that pulled away from the pack at RSAC Conference 2026. Tony Anscombe of ESET makes the case that once AI shifts from being directed by humans to operating with its own objectives and logic, the security surface changes with it, and organizations are being forced to rethink what they protect and how. At the show, ESET announced two products that meet that moment head on. The ESET AI Skills Checker is a free-to-use tool coming to market. ESET AI Protection looks inside AI sessions on the endpoint, flagging sensitive data leakage, malicious links returned by AI systems, and suspicious behavior, and surfacing it all inside normal cybersecurity operations for investigation, blocking, or detection. Tony closes with a reminder worth keeping. His first RSA was in 1998, and the technology he worked on then (sandboxing, dynamic code, remote windowing, encryption, authentication) mirrors a lot of what walks the RSAC Conference floor today. The packaging evolves, the core principles do not. Build forward, but do not lose sight of what the past already proved. This is a Brand Highlight. A Brand Highlight is a ~5 minute introductory conversation designed to put a spotlight on the guest and their company. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#highlight GUEST Tony Anscombe, Chief Security Evangelist, ESET LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyanscombe/ RESOURCES Learn more about ESET: https://www.eset.com ESET AI Skills Checker and ESET AI Protection: https://www.eset.com Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Tony Anscombe, ESET, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand highlight, agentic AI, AI security, RSAC Conference 2026, threat intelligence, MDR, EDR, endpoint security, AI Skills Checker, AI Protection, cybersecurity community, multifactor authentication, cybersecurity evolution Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Send us Fan MailCompanies often speak of their mission as a core business purpose centered around the primary products or services that it is producing to serve its customers and create value. But for Firehouse Subs, its mission is twofold: One is serving its customers the hot subs they crave, and the other is serving first responders across the country.  The company, which was founded in 1994 by brothers Chris and Robin Sorensen, takes this mission to help first responders personally. The Sorensen brothers are both former firefighters who opened the first Firehouse Subs in Jacksonville, Florida before expanding to over 1,200 restaurants in about 46 states in the U.S. As part of its mission, a portion of every purchase at Firehouse Subs goes toward the Public Safety Foundation. According to Alex Arkhangelskaya, Senior Product Manager for Firehouse Subs, the company has provided over $100 million to first responders through the foundation to help fund life-saving equipment.  

The best ideas don't just capture attention — they create consequences. In this episode, Leeann Leahy shares why emotionally resonant work matters more than ever, how curiosity fuels creativity, and why agency culture should be built around people, not perks.This is Brand Story, a podcast celebrating the stories of real people who are making an impact on brands, business, and the world around them. Episodes feature guests from a variety of backgrounds who bring their own unique perspectives to the conversation.Brand Story is created and produced by Gravity Group, a full-service brand and marketing agency, and is hosted by Gravity Group President, Steve Gilman.Links and Information From the Episode Here: gravitygroup.com/podcast/ideas-that-move-people/Continue the conversation on social:For more of Brand Story, check out our LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/gravitygroupmarketing), where we'll post previews and highlights of shows, behind-the-scenes sneak peeks, plus other marketing news you can use.We're also on:Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/gravitygroupFacebook — https://www.facebook.com/gravitygroupmarketing(00:00) Introduction to Leeann Leahy and Her Journey(06:18) From Big Agencies to Independent Shops(13:29) Why Advertising Has to Mean Something(17:10) Reinventing L.L.Bean Without Losing Its Soul(22:59) How to Connect Emotionally by Being Infectious(24:22) Golden Corral's Post-COVID Comeback(30:23) Building a Human-Centered Agency Culture(41:06) What the Industry Gets Wrong About Culture(44:20) AI, Humanity, and Ideas That Matter(46:25) Final Thoughts and Advice to Leeann's Younger Self

Ted speaks with Jude Charles, a documentary filmmaker who focuses on creating and sharing the stories of designers, builders, and architects. Jude shares how storytelling goes far beyond marketing, explaining how deeply understanding a client's journey, challenges, and purpose allows for more meaningful and impactful narratives. He walks through his process of uncovering authentic stories and why trust is built when people are willing to share their personal experiences openly. The conversation explores how storytelling directly impacts business relationships, helping companies connect with clients on a deeper level and differentiate themselves in competitive markets. Jude discusses the importance of road mapping client goals, aligning messaging with long-term vision, and using documentary-style content to communicate values, not just services. He emphasizes that great storytelling requires patience, clarity, and a willingness to dig beneath the surface. Jude also opens up about his personal journey, including overcoming rejection, navigating loss, and finding clarity in his purpose. He shares lessons on resilience, leadership, and the role of vulnerability in both life and business. The episode highlights how perspective shapes success, and why embracing challenges and staying committed to growth ultimately leads to more impactful work and stronger connections. TOPICS DISCUSSED 01:10 Introduction to Jude Charles and His Journey 04:05 The Art of Storytelling in Documentaries 07:05 Building Trust Through Personal Stories 9:00 The Impact of Documentaries on Client Relationships 10:30 Road Mapping: Understanding Client Goals 13:00 Overcoming Rejection and Finding Purpose 16:30 The Importance of Leadership in Entrepreneurship 18:45 The Journey of Growth and Resilience 22:45 Lessons from Personal Struggles 26:00 The Role of Courage in Business 28:00 Navigating Loss and Discovering Purpose 34:00 Driving Through Challenges 36:00 Embracing Vulnerability and Perspective 39:15 The Importance of Perspective in Life 46:00 Future Aspirations and New Ventures CONNECT WITH GUEST Jude Charles Website LinkedIn Instagram KEY QUOTES FROM EPISODE "Trust is built through storytelling." "Show up for the one who needs you most." "Belief shapes your reality."

WWE Backlash is this weekend! Roman Reigns vs Jacob Fatu is set to be a big moment for the Samoan Werewolf and Iyo Sky vs ASUKA is set to steal the show (but no Kairi really sucks...). Also, we dive into the recent WWE layoffs and how it impacts the stories being told plus some news on the TNA front with BROKEN MATT HARDY RETURNING! What's next for the Broken One and The Righteous?!We also give flowers to THE NEEEWWWW DAY and friend of the pod Xavier Woods aka Austin Creed and Kofi Kingston!Finally, Will Ospreay is in his most engaging storyline yet ACROSS TWO PROMOTIONS! Where is this going and is it Forbidden Door and AEW All In London?!CHAPTERS00:00 - May the 4th be with you03:01 - Poll - Darby's Title Defenses07:58 - Your Comments - WWE's...Decisions18:35 - WTF Wall - DANHAUSEN UNCURSED THE KNICKS28:33 - WWE - Farewell, New Day36:04 - Werewolf vs Tribal Chief, Breakker vs Rollins46:29 - The Rest of Backlash52:28 - TNA - BROKEN MATT, WONDERFUL!58:47 - Midcard Titles are GREAT in TNA01:04:07 - AEW - Darby's Cannonball Run01:11:07 - Ospreay, Mox and United Empire...interesting01:22:28 - 24/7 Champion of the Week⏰ Subscribe to the channel to be alerted! https://www.youtube.com/@REBOOKEDWrestling?sub_confirmation=1

Enterprises spent the last decade hardening the front door for human users. Now a new class of worker is showing up to the same applications, asking for the same data, and acting on someone else's behalf. Shreyans Mehta, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Cequence Security, joins ITSPmagazine to talk through what changes when ten or more agents are operating in your name across email, code repositories, Confluence, Salesforce, and ServiceNow at the same time. For Shreyans Mehta, safe enablement is the central question. Consumer chatbots normalized point-to-point connections into personal inboxes, but enterprise agents are reaching into crown-jewel systems where blanket access is not an option. Cequence Security has spent years protecting applications and APIs for telcos, financial institutions, and retailers, and that history shapes how the team is approaching the agentic shift: how do you let the right work get done without handing over the keys to the building? Identity alone is not the answer. Agents can hallucinate, can be prompt-injected, and will go to great lengths to complete a task. Cequence Security addresses this with what Shreyans Mehta calls an agent persona, a dynamic, job-description-driven scope that limits an agent to exactly what its role requires. An email assistant gets read access and a calendar check, not the ability to send or delete. The job defines the permissions, and the permissions follow the agent through the Cequence AI Gateway platform. This is a Brand Highlight. A Brand Highlight is a ~5 minute introductory conversation designed to put a spotlight on the guest and their company. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#highlight GUEST Shreyans Mehta, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Cequence Security LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shreyans-mehta-37a529/ RESOURCES Learn more about Cequence Security: https://www.cequence.ai/ Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Shreyans Mehta, Cequence Security, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand highlight, agentic AI, agent identity, AI agents, agent persona, API security, non-human identity, safe enablement, enterprise AI, prompt injection, MCP, AI gateway Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Send us Fan MailAmazon seller fees, FBA surcharge, Amazon Ads payment changes, and A+ content alt text updates are adding new pressure on margins. This April update covers fulfillment fee increases, credit card payment changes, retail proceeds billing, and seller account impact. It also explains why alt text indexing changes matter for Amazon SEO, A+ content, brand story modules, FAQs, and product ranking.Amazon fee changes, ad billing shifts, and A+ content updates can drain margin fast. Get a seller account review before the next update hits: https://bit.ly/4jMZtxu#amazonfbanews  #AmazonSellers #AmazonAds #AmazonPPC #ecommercetips Want free resources? Dowload our Free Amazon guides here:Amazon Receiving Delay Guide: https://hubs.ly/Q04cdD4c0Amazon Catalog Spring Cleaning: https://hubs.ly/Q046BVfp0Amazon Proft Margin Defense 2026: https://hubs.ly/Q042trRH0Amazon SEO Toolkit 2026: https://bit.ly/4oC2ClTAmazon Seller Strategy Report 2026: https://bit.ly/3YN1RME2026 Ecommerce Website & SEO Readiness Checklist: https://hubs.ly/Q04btghf0Amazon 2026 PPC guide: https://bit.ly/4lF0OYXTimestamps:00:00 - Amazon FBA Surcharge and Fee Pressure01:12 - Why Seller Margins Are Getting Hit02:04 - Amazon Ads Credit Card Payment Changes03:18 - Retail Proceeds and Ad Billing Risk04:24 - A+ Content Alt Text Indexing Change05:40 - Why Alt Text May No Longer Help Ranking06:52 - Brand Story, FAQs, and A+ Content Updates08:05 - Seller Reaction to Amazon Payment Changes09:18 - What Sellers Should Check in Seller Central10:25 - Amazon Updates That Can Hurt Profit-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow us:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28605816/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevenpopemag/Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/myamazonguys/Twitter: https://twitter.com/myamazonguySubscribe to the My Amazon Guy podcast: https://podcast.myamazonguy.comApple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-amazon-guy/id1501974229Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4A5ASHGGfr6s4wWNQIqyVwSupport the show

Send us Fan MailAmazon brand management services explained for sellers looking to grow sales and improve PPC performance. This covers how Amazon agencies manage Seller Central, relaunch products, and handle ads for growth. Learn how switching providers and using full account management can improve Amazon sales results.Still managing everything alone and seeing slow growth? Get a full account breakdown and see what's holding your sales back: https://bit.ly/4jMZtxu#AmazonFBA #AmazonPPC #AmazonBrand #EcommerceGrowth #amazonsellerssociety Want free resources? Dowload our Free Amazon guides here:Amazon Receiving Delay Guide: https://hubs.ly/Q04cdD4c0Amazon Catalog Spring Cleaning: https://hubs.ly/Q046BVfp0Amazon Proft Margin Defense 2026: https://hubs.ly/Q042trRH0Amazon SEO Toolkit 2026: https://bit.ly/4oC2ClTAmazon Seller Strategy Report 2026: https://bit.ly/3YN1RME2026 Ecommerce Website & SEO Readiness Checklist: https://hubs.ly/Q04btghf0Amazon 2026 PPC guide: https://bit.ly/4lF0OYXTimestamps:00:00 - Switching Amazon Service Providers00:34 - Referral From Another Amazon Seller01:24 - Help With Amazon Sales and Product Relaunch02:11 - How Amazon Brand Management Works03:06 - Brand Story and Conversion Rate Impact-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow us:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28605816/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevenpopemag/Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/myamazonguys/Twitter: https://twitter.com/myamazonguySubscribe to the My Amazon Guy podcast: https://podcast.myamazonguy.comApple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-amazon-guy/id1501974229Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4A5ASHGGfr6s4wWNQIqyVwSupport the show

Send us Fan MailEven as SharkNinja has grown into a home goods behemoth with a market cap over $17 billion, the fundamental expectations of its customers have remained the same: They want to see the company deliver the same value it has always provided them. Known for its Shark vacuums and its Ninja blenders among other products, SharkNinja still focuses on one consumer at a time. Or to put it another way, CEO Mark Barrocas has often said that the goal is to build the business one five-star review at a time. For SharkNinja, providing value to its customers goes beyond just delivering great products. It's also about delivering top-notch customer service that creates a superior customer experience. Jake Finch, Vice President of Global Customer Experience for SharkNinja, has seen customer experience become a much more holistic deliverable for companies today.

The floor at RSAC Conference 2026 had one dominant frequency, and it was not subtle. Every booth, every hallway, every late-night conversation kept circling back to the same question: how do enterprises adopt AI agents without losing control of them? In a post-conference follow-up, Itamar Apelblat, Co-Founder and CEO of Token Security, translates what he heard on the ground into what the data now confirms. Token Security arrived at RSAC with a fresh set of findings, produced in collaboration with the Cloud Security Alliance and released alongside the event. The report, Autonomous but Not Controlled: AI Agent Incidents Now Common in Enterprises, puts numbers to what practitioners already suspected: 65 percent of organizations have experienced an AI agent-related incident in the past twelve months, and 82 percent discovered agents running in their environment that no one had authorized. Only 21 percent have a formal process for decommissioning agents — a gap Itamar Apelblat flags as a low-hanging attack path. The short version from the conversation: visibility is the starting line, not the finish line, and the path from discovery to intent-based enforcement is where most programs are stuck. This is a Brand Highlight. A Brand Highlight is a ~5 minute introductory conversation designed to put a spotlight on the guest and their company. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#highlight GUEST Itamar Apelblat, Co-Founder and CEO, Token Security | https://www.linkedin.com/in/itamar-apelblat/ RESOURCES Learn more about Token Security: https://www.token.security/ Download the CSA + Token Security Report — Autonomous but Not Controlled: AI Agent Incidents Now Common in Enterprises: https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/artifacts/autonomous-but-not-controlled-ai-agent-incidents-now-common-in-enterprises Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Itamar Apelblat, Token Security, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand highlight, AI agents, agentic AI, non-human identity, identity security, shadow AI, CSA report, Cloud Security Alliance, intent-based access, AI agent governance, agent decommissioning, RSAC Conference 2026 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Building a business isn't just about what you sell — it's about what you believe. In this episode, Jim Campbell shares why purpose-driven work matters, how organic agriculture is reshaping the way people think about food, and what it looks like to build a company that puts people, animals, and the land first.This is Brand Story, a podcast celebrating the stories of real people who are making an impact on brands, business, and the world around them. Episodes feature guests from a variety of backgrounds who bring their own unique perspectives to the conversation.Brand Story is created and produced by Gravity Group, a full-service brand and marketing agency, and is hosted by Gravity Group President, Steve Gilman.Links and Information From the Episode Here: https://www.gravitygroup.com/podcast/rooted-in-purpose/Continue the conversation on social:For more of Brand Story, check out our LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/gravitygroupmarketing), where we'll post previews and highlights of shows, behind-the-scenes sneak peeks, plus other marketing news you can use.We're also on:Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/gravitygroupFacebook — https://www.facebook.com/gravitygroupmarketing(00:00) Introduction – Jim Campbell, President & CEO of New Country Organic (01:38) Jim's Origin Story – From financial services to farming: horses, land, chickens, and finding a mission (03:20) What's wrong with conventional feed and the case for organic (04:48) The Homesteading Movement – Self-sufficiency, the pandemic effect, and why NCO's mission aligns with a growing cultural shift (06:00) NCO's Three Core Missions – Feeding animals well, building soil health, and taking care of people (16:07) Decoding Food Labels: Organic vs. Non-GMO – Why USDA Certified Organic is the gold standard and what "non-GMO" really means (22:56) Backyard Chickens as a Gateway – Why chickens attract new homesteaders, and the very human benefits of connecting with animals (27:52) Custom Feeds & Allergy-Driven Product Development – How customer needs (and a tearful after-hours phone call) shaped NCO's product line(30:06) The Pandemic Demand Surge – A tsunami of new homesteaders and what it revealed about distrust of "Big Food" (35:31) National Expansion: Texas, Nevada & the UK – Growing from Virginia roots to a nationwide (and soon international) footprint(37:58) Supporting the Organic Farming Ecosystem – Buying American organic grains and helping farmers transition away from conventional agriculture(39:17) Customer Care as a Brand Value – Treating every customer like a person, not a ticket(41:48) Vision for NCO's Future – Organic nutrition, soil products, insect protein, and international growth(44:10) Jim's Chapter of Life: Creation – Reflections on entrepreneurship, lifelong learning, and wishing he'd started sooner(46:05) Advice to a Younger Self – Take more risks, find your own thing, and stay curious

Send us Fan MailIt was in McAllen, a small town just over 300 miles from Austin, where Donna Varner had a revelation about her new employer. Varner had been hired by Schlotzsky's Deli as Chief Brand Officer, and one of her first tasks was to lead the deli franchise through a rebranding effort.  While trying to get back to Schlotzsky's home base in Austin one day, a storm in Texas led to canceled flights, and so Varner and a handful of other people decided to carpool there together instead. After telling her fellow passengers where she worked while passing through McAllen, something stuck out to her: All of them referred to Schlotzsky's as Schlotzsky's Deli.  Although the company had dropped Deli from its name during a previous rebranding, Varner realized how important it remained to its identity among its longtime customers.  “Every single person in that car knew Schlotzky's because they were Texans. But they all called it Schlotzsky's Deli,” Varner said. “So, one of the things that we found out is even though the brand has had a lot of names and we've dropped deli over the years, we still had a deli heritage.” Loyalty360 spoke to Varner about her rebranding strategy, how the company continues to innovate its loyalty program, and the challenge of attracting a younger generation of diners, while continuing to deliver the service and menu that its most devoted customers expect.  

In an era where AI can generate endless streams of content in seconds, what truly makes a company stand out? It all comes down to authentic human connection.Listen in as host Natalie Benamou welcomes Sue Kirchner, Founder of Brand Strong Marketing, for an energizing conversation about the power of storytelling, personal branding, and community building.Sue shares how she guides companies to leverage their unique strength and their authentic brand story.Whether you are a solopreneur trying to carve out your niche, or a founder preparing your company for an acquisition, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you build loyalty and trust.HighlightsThe AI Content TrapThe Missing Brand Story in M&ACreating Memorable Experiential BrandsScaling Beyond the FounderPersonal Branding EssentialsGrab a notebook and get ready to reflect on how your brand shows up in the world!Keep shining your light bright. The world needs you.A note of gratitude to Jen Anderson for introducing us!About Sue KirchnerSue Kirchner is the Founder of Brand Strong Marketing - a brand strategy consulting firm, and Host of the Turbo Branding Show. Leveraging her proven Brand Strong Methodology she has helped thriving businesses create Wow! brands, allowing them to scale faster, easier and more successfully. LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suekirchner/YT: https://www.youtube.com/@brandstrongmarketingIG: https://www.instagram.com/brandstrongmarketing/PN: https://www.pinterest.com/BrandStrongMktg/Podcast: YT: https://www.youtube.com/@brandstrongmarketing/podcastsApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-turbo-branding-show/id1771868942HerCsuite® is a portfolio career network where women build what's next. Our members land board roles, grow businesses, lead the AI conversation, and live their best portfolio career with our programs. Join us at HerCsuite.com, or connect with host Natalie Benamou on LinkedIn.

RSAC Conference 2026 is in the books, and the post-event read is familiar. More vendors, more AI-driven marketing, more noise, and a buyer-side audience that increasingly cannot tell who to trust. Michael Parisi, Chief Growth Officer at Steel Patriot Partners, joins ITSPmagazine for a quick post-event catch-up on what he walked away with, and what is quietly shifting underneath all that volume. The headline takeaway is what Michael Parisi calls the "fog of more." Marketing has done its job too well. CISOs and business leaders facing real decisions cannot tell competing solutions apart, do not know where to start, and are not sure their current stack is even the right one. Too much information has become its own information problem. What is shifting, according to Michael Parisi, is where the meaningful conversations actually happen. Closed-door, hallway, and dinner conversations have always existed at RSAC Conference, but more people are now openly recognizing that this is where the real industry decisions get made. That recognition is changing how teams plan to engage with future conferences and industry events. For Steel Patriot Partners, which describes itself as business owners first, engineers second, and security and compliance practitioners third, that is exactly the conversation they want to be in. This is a Brand Highlight. A Brand Highlight is a ~5 minute introductory conversation designed to put a spotlight on the guest and their company. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#highlight GUEST Michael Parisi, Chief Growth Officer, Steel Patriot Partners | https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-parisi-4009b2261/ RESOURCES Learn more about Steel Patriot Partners: https://www.steelpatriotpartners.com Steel Patriot Partners Assistance Center: https://www.steelpatriotpartners.com View all of our RSAC Conference 2026 coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/rsac26 Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Michael Parisi, Steel Patriot Partners, Marco Ciappelli, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand highlight, RSAC Conference 2026, RSAC, cybersecurity compliance, fog of more, vendor noise, CISO, GRC, cybersecurity advisory, FedRAMP, CMMC, HITRUST, AI security marketing, hallway conversations, post RSAC Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

RSAC Conference 2026 made one thing impossible to miss: AI is on every sticker, every slide, and every booth. Sorting signal from marketing has never been harder. Lisa Liu, Corporate Marketing and Communications Manager at Stellar Cyber, joins this Brand Highlight to continue a conversation that started on the show floor in San Francisco and was worth picking up again once the noise settled. Stellar Cyber has been incorporating machine learning into every layer of its security platform since 2015, well before AI became the marketing default. The position Lisa Liu brings is direct: AI is not a one-size-fits-all solution. A large language model is not the most efficient way to parse log data, and slapping an AI label on existing functionality is not the same as designing for the analyst pain points at every stage of detection, investigation, and response. The conversation closes on the autonomous SOC question, where Stellar Cyber argues for a human-augmented approach. Promises of complete autonomy deserve healthy skepticism; guardrails matter, and keeping a human analyst in the loop is what allows AI mistakes to be caught and contained before they cascade. It is a Brand Highlight worth a few minutes for anyone trying to separate AI substance from AI theater in security operations. This is a Brand Highlight. A Brand Highlight is a ~5 minute introductory conversation designed to put a spotlight on the guest and their company. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#highlight GUEST Lisa Liu, Corporate Marketing and Communications Manager, Stellar Cyber | On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisaaliu/ RESOURCES Learn more about Stellar Cyber: https://stellarcyber.ai/ View all of our RSAC Conference 2026 coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/rsac26 Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Lisa Liu, Stellar Cyber, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand highlight, RSAC Conference 2026, Multi-Layer AI, human-augmented autonomous SOC, machine learning, Open XDR, NG-SIEM, security operations, AI in cybersecurity, agentic AI, SOC analyst, security platform Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

At The NAMM Show 2026, John Page walks Sean Martin of ITSPmagazine through a hand-painted electric guitar called the Retablo. The motifs are lifted from the artwork that traditionally sits behind a cathedral altar, reimagined so the saints and icons are not from scripture but from the roots of American music. Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Muddy Waters. Howlin' Wolf. Mahalia Jackson. The canvases themselves are cut from the floorboards of an old church. It is one of the most personal guitars John Page has ever built. The conversation traces the arc of John Page Guitars, the small-batch shop John Page runs after more than 20 years at Fender, where he co-founded the legendary Custom Shop and led guitar research and development. He has now been designing and building guitars for 53 years. What gets made today at John Page Guitars is built by a small team, with John Page handling his own custom work and prototypes while a master builder works alongside him on production models. What makes the instruments different is not one big thing but a series of quiet decisions. John Page mounts the neck to the body with threaded machine inserts and machine bolts instead of standard wood screws, a coupling he believes transfers tone better between neck and body and adds overtone complexity that a conventional bolt-on simply does not produce. A flatter 12-inch radius, a reverse-angled bridge pickup that removes the ice-pick high, a vintage-feeling neck profile. Every decision serves a single goal: an instrument that sings as a complete unit. John Page describes his design philosophy in two short phrases. The first is "uniquely familiar," the idea that a guitar should feel comfortable in a player's hands and recognizable in their eyes while still being clearly its own thing. The second is "balanced asymmetry," an imbalance in which he finds a kind of perfect balance. Both show up in the offset fret markers, the body contours, and even in the restraint of the aesthetic choices that surround the Retablo's portraits. The Retablo itself is where that philosophy leaves the factory floor and becomes something closer to a reliquary. John Page had never painted portraits before. He taught himself, hand-painting each founder of American roots music onto wood reclaimed from a dismantled church, designing and building a custom bridge that routes volume and tone controls into the tailpiece so the body can carry its imagery unbroken. A full documentary exists on the making of the guitar for anyone who wants the layer-on-layer detail. When the talking is done, Bryan Ray of John Page Guitars steps in with one of the new baritone builds to let the instrument speak for itself. Every design decision John Page described is suddenly in the room, audible, as one of his guitars does exactly what he designed it to do. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUESTS John Page, Founder, John Page Guitars (Co-Founder, Fender Custom Shop) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-page-742b4213/ Bryan Ray, Marketing Director, John Page Classic LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-ray-a63b5419/ RESOURCES John Page Guitars: https://www.johnpageguitars.com/ Meet John Page: https://www.johnpageguitars.com/pages/john-page The Retablo and other Art Guitars: https://www.johnpageguitars.com/pages/john-page John Page Signature Collection: https://www.johnpageguitars.com/collections/guitars The NAMM Show: https://www.namm.org/ Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS John Page, Bryan Ray, John Page Guitars, John Page Classic, Fender Custom Shop, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand spotlight, guitar design, luthier, electric guitar, The NAMM Show 2026, NAMM 2026, Retablo art guitar, Ashburn, Bloodline pickups, American roots music, custom guitars, handmade guitars, boutique guitar builder Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

At The NAMM Show 2026, Drum Workshop turned its booth into a walk-through of what a modern drum company looks like when craft, heritage, and engineering share the same floor. Scott Donnell, Director of Brand Management at Drum Workshop, Inc., guided us through a lineup that spans the DW Custom Shop, the revived Slingerland Radio King line, Latin Percussion, Pacific Drums and Percussion, and the brand's new DW Manufacturing series. The DW Custom Shop stand is a visible argument for customization as a sonic decision, not just a cosmetic one. Chrome, gold, satin chrome, and black hardware. Polyester sprays, three durable lacquers, exotic plies, and ply wraps. When a drummer specifies wood species, ply count, and grain orientation, they are designing the drum's voice from the inside out. The Slingerland revival gets the faithful-reproduction treatment. Radio King studio kits on display are solid, steam-bent maple shells with the original three-point throw-off and stick saver hoops, built in California. Scott Donnell speaks about the line the way a curator talks about a restoration: get the details right, honor what drummers remember, and let the sound do the rest. Donnell frames DW's innovation as a stack of deliberate decisions rather than a single breakthrough. DW stamps a note into each shell through a process called timbre matching, which ensures the kit is manufactured as a family. Pair that with grain orientation technology, True Pitch tuning, and resonance-focused tom mounting systems, and drummers never end up with an orphan drum in their kit. Marking the tenth anniversary of True Cast, the new DW Manufacturing four by 14 piccolo features a five millimeter sand-cast shell, cast bronze hoops, and fully machined brass and bronze hardware. Only one hundred are being made globally, each arriving in an Anvil flight case. A recent DW video features Dave Elitch and Abe Laboriel Jr. playing the drum with Paul McCartney. The conversation closes on a Red Hot Chili Peppers tour kit gifted to the DW museum by Chad Smith, which will join Neil Peart's and Terry Bozzio's tour kits on display while DW builds Chad new Sonic flight drums for the band's next tour. Pacific Drums and Percussion, LP's top-tuning congas, Tony Escapa's signature hand percussion series, and DWE round out the booth. Drum Workshop is not hiding how the drums get made. Take the tour, take the pictures, watch the videos, and the innovation speaks for itself. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Scott Donnell, Director of Brand Management, Drum Workshop, Inc. (DW Drums) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-donnell-2964a129/ RESOURCES DW Drums: https://www.dwdrums.com Pacific Drums and Percussion: https://www.pacificdrums.com DW Music Foundation: https://www.dwmf.org The NAMM Show: https://www.namm.org Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Scott Donnell, Drum Workshop, DW Drums, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand spotlight, NAMM Show 2026, NAMM 2026, Slingerland, Radio King, Latin Percussion, LP, Pacific Drums and Percussion, PDP, DW Manufacturing, True Cast, custom drums, drum innovation, timbre matching, grain orientation, Chad Smith, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Josh Freese, Tony Escapa, Abe Laboriel Jr, Dave Elitch Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you walked RSAC Conference 2026 expecting incremental updates, you left with something very different. Thyaga Vasudevan, EVP, Product at Skyhigh Security, describes this year as unlike any prior conference -- not because of a single announcement, but because the customers asking how to secure agentic AI were the same customers already building and deploying it. The urgency was real, immediate, and universal across organization sizes. The defining theme was agentic security. Vasudevan frames it around three core questions every security team now needs to answer: who is acting (agent identity), what are they accessing (data and APIs), and what are they trying to do (actions and permissions). The ChatGPT launch in November 2022 marked a generational shift -- and at RSAC 2026, Skyhigh Security observed that the industry had moved decisively from data-in and data-out protection to governing the actions of autonomous agents themselves. Data sovereignty was the other major conversation thread, driven by geopolitical realities and tightening regional data regulations. Vasudevan spoke with CISOs from financial services, healthcare, public sector, and not-for-profit organizations, each with different infrastructure approaches -- from on-prem data centers to sovereign clouds to full cloud deployments -- but all navigating the same fundamental challenge. DSPM and hybrid architectures are no longer optional for global enterprises. And quietly but significantly, browser security emerged as a front-and-center priority, reflecting the browser's growing role as a primary cloud endpoint. This is a Brand Highlight. A Brand Highlight is a ~5 minute introductory conversation designed to put a spotlight on the guest and their company. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#highlight GUEST Thyaga Vasudevan, EVP, Product, Skyhigh Security LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thyaga12/ RESOURCES Skyhigh Security: https://www.skyhighsecurity.com RSAC Conference 2026 Coverage: https://itspmagazine.com/rsac26 Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Thyaga Vasudevan, Skyhigh Security, Sean Martin, Marco Ciappelli, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand highlight, agentic AI security, data sovereignty, SSE, Security Service Edge, DSPM, zero trust, browser security, cloud security, RSAC Conference 2026, RSAC 2026, AI agent security, MCP security Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Anthony Cusimano, Director of Solutions Marketing at Object First, joined Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli for a post-RSAC Conference 2026 recap -- and his observations from the show floor offer a window into how the security industry is evolving. One of the most telling details came from just outside the Moscone Center, where a company had set up an AI-free zone: a place for attendees to catch their breath from the wall-to-wall AI messaging dominating the event. That detail points to something bigger. The AI hype cycle that peaked over the past two years is giving way to a more demanding audience. At RSAC Conference 2026, Cusimano heard a different kind of question: not whether a company uses AI, but whether it uses it responsibly -- and whether zero trust principles are baked in. The novelty is gone; accountability is what the floor was asking for. For Object First, the shift in booth conversations has been even more meaningful. The question that used to greet them -- why is a backup storage company at a security conference? -- has been replaced by relief that they are there at all. Organizations now understand that backup and backup storage sit at the core of resilience and recovery. Cusimano described a floor full of teams thinking proactively, evaluating solutions before a crisis forces the decision. This is a Brand Highlight. A Brand Highlight is a ~5 minute introductory conversation designed to put a spotlight on the guest and their company. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#highlight GUEST Anthony Cusimano, Director of Solutions Marketing, Object First LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonycusimano89/ RESOURCES Object First website: https://objectfirst.com ITSPmagazine RSAC Conference 2026 coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/rsac-2026-conference-san-francisco-usa-cybersecurity-event-infosec-conference-coverage Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Anthony Cusimano, Object First, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand highlight, immutable backup storage, ransomware protection, Ootbi, Veeam backup, zero trust, data resilience, RSAC Conference 2026, cybersecurity, backup security, data recovery, edge security, fleet manager Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When Sci-Fi Becomes the Business Plan A Brand Highlight Conversation with Jacob Flores, Head of Research at Type One Ventures There is a version of investing that asks what the return will be. And then there is the version that asks what kind of future the investment makes possible. Jacob Flores, Head of Research at Type One Ventures, is working firmly in the second category. Type One Ventures takes its name from the Kardashev Scale — a framework developed by Soviet astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev that ranks civilizations by their level of technological advancement. A Type One civilization has mastered its home planet and is beginning to extend its reach beyond it. That is the destination this firm is trying to fund. Flores, a former engineer and product manager with roughly a decade of experience across industries, leads the research function at Type One with a focus on AI, neurotech, and biotechnology. The firm's investment lens is as much philosophical as it is financial. Type One looks for platform builders — companies whose core technology can be stacked across multiple applications, cultivating new marketplaces and entirely new categories of industry. Manufacturing in space is one clear example: in microgravity, it becomes possible to grow proteins, print circuits, and develop materials that cannot be produced the same way on Earth — yet those products have immediate, tangible value back on the ground. The thesis extends well beyond orbit. Type One is also backing neurotechnology companies working to restore vision and movement for people who have lost those abilities, and longevity research aimed at extending healthy human life. Flores frames these not as moonshots for their own sake, but as the new foundation layer for an entirely new level of global industry. This is a Brand Highlight. A Brand Highlight is a ~5 minute introductory conversation designed to put a spotlight on the guest and their company. Learn more Host Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder, ITSPmagazine Guest Jacob Flores, Head of Research, Type One Ventures Resources Type One Ventures Type One Ventures on LinkedIn Want to tell your story? Full Length Brand Story Brand Spotlight Story Brand Highlight Story Keywords: Jacob Flores, Type One Ventures, Marco Ciappelli, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand highlight, space technology, deep tech, venture capital, multi-planetary civilization, Kardashev Scale, manufacturing in space, neurotech, longevity, AI, biotechnology, frontier technology, space investing, human longevity, platform builders Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ronny Kobo is the founder and creative force behind her namesake label, building the brand from a clear personal vision of modern, confident femininity. She has shaped it into a globally recognized fashion house that reflects her instinct for what women actually want to wear–pieces that feel powerful, sexy, and effortless at the same time. Ronny Kobo is defined by its bold silhouettes, body-skimming fits, and statement prints that are designed to stand out without feeling overworked. Ronny Kobo herself brings a strong editorial eye to every collection, blending European polish with a New York sensibility that keeps the brand both elevated and wearable. Over time, she has built a loyal community of women who turn to the brand for occasion dressing that still feels grounded in real life. The result is a label that consistently sits at the intersection of trend-aware and timeless, with a distinct point of view that doesn't chase attention, it commands it. In this episode, Ronny also discusses: How Hong Kong women inspired her fashion empire Why business partnerships feel like a marriage (and what makes them work) Navigating real challenges and building resilience How smaller budgets drive sharper, more authentic marketing Staying independent and protecting creative freedom The return of 2000s fashion Why Instagram is your digital tattoo—post with intention We hope you enjoy this episode and gain valuable insights into Ronny's journey and the growth of Ronny Kobo. Don't forget to subscribe to the Glam & Grow podcast for more in-depth conversations with the most incredible brands, founders, and more. Be sure to check out Ronny Kobo at www.ronnykobo.com and on Instagram at @ronnykobo Rated #1 Best Beauty Business Podcast on FeedPost This episode is brought to you by Wavebreak Leading direct-to-consumer brands hire Wavebreak to turn email marketing into a top revenue driver. Most eCommerce brands don't email right... and it costs them. At Wavebreak, our eCommerce email marketing agency helps qualified brands recapture 7+ figures of lost revenue each year. From abandoned cart emails to Black Friday campaigns, our best-in-class team manage the entire process: strategy, design, copywriting, coding, and testing. All aimed at driving growth, profit, brand recognition, and most importantly, ROI. Curious if Wavebreak is right for you? Reach out at Wavebreak.co

Why the Last Couch You'll Ever Buy Is the Most Radical Business Idea in America, with Shawn David Nelson What does it take to build a brand designed to last forever — in an industry built on replacement cycles? Shawn David Nelson started Lovesac at 18 with a hand-sewn bean bag made from his parents' chopped-up camping mattresses. He paid $25 to register the company. Today, Lovesac (NASDAQ: LOVE) operates 300+ showrooms, employs 2,000 people, and is one of the fastest-growing furniture brands in America — anchored by a product philosophy so counterintuitive it sounds almost reckless. They want you to buy their couch once. And keep it for the rest of your life. In this episode, Shawn shares the full arc: winning $1 million on Richard Branson's Fox reality show The Rebel Billionaire in 2004, surviving Chapter 11 bankruptcy two years later, and 10x-ing the company by purging 90% of their SKUs to focus on one brilliant product — the Sactionals modular sectional sofa system. He unpacks the demonstration marketing strategy that turned a showroom into a live brand story experience, the forever philosophy that redefines what sustainability really means, and the Shawnisms from his new book Let Me Save You 25 Years that distill 25 years of hard-won entrepreneurial wisdom. Park also runs Lovesac through the StoryCycle Genie brand analysis — and the results land remarkably close to Lovesac's own mission carved on the wall at headquarters: "We will inspire humankind to buy better stuff." What You'll Discover: • Why demonstration marketing drives 90% of Lovesac's business — and how it converts a showroom into a live brand story • How the forever philosophy turns sustainability from a marketing claim into an engineering commitment • The Shawnism that saved Lovesac from bankruptcy: "You can quit or you can keep going" • Why Lovesac is onshoring manufacturing to the U.S. — and why robots in America will be cheaper than Vietnam • How brand storytelling is 50% of building a remarkable product company — and why Shawn admits it's actually closer to 90% Find Shawn at Lovesac.com and on all social platforms @ShawnOfLovesac. His book and podcast Let Me Save You 25 Years are available wherever you get your books and podcasts. Subscribe to the Business of Story wherever you get your podcasts.

When a production line stops, the financial damage is immediate — and the window to respond safely is narrower than most security teams realize. Rob Demain, CEO and Founder of e2e-assure, joins this Brand Highlight to explain why OT security demands a fundamentally different mindset than IT, and what organizations can do about it. Operational technology runs the infrastructure that keeps the world moving — manufacturing floors, power grids, air traffic control systems. Rob Demain founded e2e-assure in 2013 and has spent the past seven years narrowing its focus to one discipline: SOC and MDR services. He calls it "specificity" — the principle that doing one thing with precision delivers better outcomes than spreading resources thin. In IT security, the primary concern is data. In OT, the stakes are entirely different. Downtime is the real threat. For a manufacturing business, minutes of halted production translate directly into significant financial loss. That distinction changes everything about how security teams must respond. The "safety first" rule in OT means responders sometimes have to run alongside a threat rather than immediately neutralize it — because disconnecting systems could halt the production line entirely. The most common attack path into OT environments runs through IT: adversaries compromise IT first, then move laterally into OT systems. Supply chain risk is the second major vector. Firmware updates, software patches, and third-party management systems all represent potential entry points. Detection takes longer too — OT systems often lack the endpoint tools that trigger fast alerts, leaving threats to surface as subtle pattern deviations over extended periods. This is a Brand Highlight — a short introductory conversation designed to put a spotlight on the guest and their company. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#highlight GUEST Rob Demain, CEO & Founder, e2e-assure LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/rob-demain-01733468 RESOURCES e2e-assure website: https://e2e-assure.com OT Downtime and Remediation Gaps Research: https://e2e-assure.com Are you interested in telling your story? Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Adam Belmont is the founder of A to B Strategies, a communications consultancy where he merges his big-agency experience with the nimbleness of a solopreneur. He's also “The Podcast Guy” who helps his clients get booked on top-tier shows. In this episode, Adam recounts his journey from agency work to creating his own consultancy. He also shares how to craft compelling brand stories, the art of podcast pitching, and the importance of authenticity in social media content.Key Takeaways:- Adam's transition from agency life to independent consulting- Crafting compelling brand stories- Effective podcast pitching strategiesEpisode Timeline:0:45 Introduction and Tod Perry's background2:25 Adam Belmont's background and expertise3:30 Adam met his wife on JDate4:50 Motivations for going independent7:25 Work-life balance and location flexibility8:30 Adam Belmont's biggest success as a solo act10:00 Building a trusted network of collaborators13:00 How Adam helps clients book on top podcasts15:00 The value of long-form storytelling in podcasts16:30 Discovering a brand's story19:00 Creating scroll-stopping social media content22:30 Adam's thought leadership philosophy 25:20 Analyzing the McDonald's CEO burger incidentThis episode's guest:• Adam Belmont on LinkedIn• A to B Strategies on LinkedIn Subscribe and leave a 5-star review: https://pod.link/1496390646Contact Us!•Join the conversation by leaving a comment!•Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn!Thanks for listening! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I can't believe people can do THAT.I can't believe people can DO that.I can't believe PEOPLE can do that.***To get regular advice, frameworks, and stories helping you communicate with greater clarity and resonance, subscribe to my newsletter→PS: As mentioned in previous episodes, please expect a name change and cover art change for the show soon. Can't wait for things to come!***ABOUT ME, JAY ACUNZOI work with entrepreneurs, execs, and teams on the journey from competent to resonant. To do that, I help transform your thinking into clear, captivating ideas, speeches, and IP. Stop chasing attention. Become the one others seek.I'm a former marketing leader at Google and HubSpot and globally touring speaker and author. I've spent 20 years building the exact thought leadership I now help clients create—as a practitioner-peer, not a coach with templates.Work with me 1:1, book me to speak, or explore free resources at jayacunzo.comDon't market more. Matter more.Think resonance over reach.Don't be the best. Be their favorite.***IF YOU ENJOY THE SHOW:Leave a review on Apple Podcasts Leave a rating on Spotify Thanks for listening!

The security industry has spent years debating which tools to buy. Impetum is asking a different question: are the tools you already have actually working? Founded by incident responders who saw the same failures across hundreds of breaches, Impetum built the Persistent Purple Team platform to simulate advanced threat actors inside customer environments on a continuous monthly basis -- not as a one-time engagement, but as an ongoing relationship built around real data, custom TTPs, and a measurable Threat Resilience Score. Matt Stewart and Alex Grohmann spoke with Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli at RSAC Conference 2026 about what they are hearing on the show floor: agentic AI is accelerating the speed of compromise and exposing vulnerabilities in legacy systems that have been dormant for decades. Against that backdrop, the value of knowing -- not assuming -- that your detection and response capabilities hold up becomes critical. The platform builds that knowledge through live-fire exercises using an organization's own data, validating patch management, XDR, SIEM tuning, and post-compromise detection in a way no annual pen test can. The conversation also touched on the structural talent problem agentic AI is creating inside SOCs. As AI fills the level one analyst role, the pipeline for developing level two analysts and incident responders is narrowing. Impetum sees persistent purple teaming as the training ground that closes that gap -- giving existing teams the repeated, realistic practice they need to respond with confidence when an actual breach begins. Impetum targets mid-size organizations that have the right security tools but lack the budget, bandwidth, and access to industry events to keep those tools continuously validated against evolving attack paths. For those teams, the platform delivers something an annual report cannot: a documented, ongoing record of what works, what does not, and where the program is heading. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Matt Stewart, Co-Founder, Impetum Alex Grohmann, Co-Founder, Impetum LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandergrohmann/ RESOURCES Impetum / Persistent Purple Team: https://www.persistentpurpleteam.com ITSPmagazine RSAC Conference 2026 coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/rsac-2026-conference-san-francisco-usa-cybersecurity-event-infosec-conference-coverage Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Matt Stewart, Alex Grohmann, Impetum, Persistent Purple Team, Remedium Security, Sean Martin, RSAC Conference 2026, brand spotlight, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, purple teaming, continuous security validation, threat resilience, CISO, security operations, SOC, red team, blue team, incident response, agentic AI, MITRE ATT&CK, penetration testing, cybersecurity Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Most organizations are not cloud-only and, according to Thyaga Vasudevan, EVP, Product at Skyhigh Security, they are unlikely to become cloud-only anytime soon. Legacy on-prem applications, new AI workloads kept inside the firewall, and the growing cost of routing all enterprise traffic through a cloud proxy are pushing organizations toward a hybrid security architecture -- one that needs to enforce consistent policy regardless of where the traffic goes or where the data lives. Skyhigh Security announced three major innovations at RSAC Conference 2026: a next-generation SSE hybrid platform with a single console managing on-prem and cloud enforcement under one policy construct; a patent-pending browser security capability that injects JavaScript controls dynamically into existing browser sessions without requiring a dedicated enterprise browser; and the general availability of its DSPM platform, which uniquely provides visibility into both data at rest and data in motion by combining proxy-layer inspection with posture management. The browser has quietly become the most important enforcement point in the enterprise. As AI tools like Microsoft Copilot operate through web socket connections that cannot be intercepted at the server level, security controls have to reach inside the browser session itself. Vasudevan describes a seamless approach: because Skyhigh Security already sees the traffic flowing through its SSE cloud, it can inject controls at the browser layer without asking employees to change the tools they use. Data sovereignty is no longer a compliance footnote -- it is an architectural driver. Vasudevan walked through a global manufacturer operating simultaneously in Europe, the United States, and China. Each region carries different regulatory constraints, different trust postures for cloud infrastructure, and different performance requirements. Skyhigh Security's hybrid platform handles all three scenarios under the same management framework and the same policy construct. The customer chooses where enforcement happens -- on-prem, cloud, or hybrid -- without rebuilding their security architecture. On AI agents, Vasudevan describes the evolution clearly: 2022 was about protecting data flowing into generative AI tools; 2025 became about protecting the actions of the agents themselves. Skyhigh Security positions itself as a proxy between agent traffic and the systems agents interact with -- whether MCP servers or SaaS applications -- monitoring what goes in and what comes out in real time. DSPM provides the baseline: know where sensitive data is and what risk it carries before any agent is given access to it. That distinction between sensitivity and risk is what allows organizations to make smart, dynamic decisions rather than blanket restrictions. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Thyaga Vasudevan, EVP, Product, Skyhigh Securityhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/thyaga12/ RESOURCES Skyhigh Security: https://www.skyhighsecurity.com Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Thyaga Vasudevan, Skyhigh Security, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand spotlight, hybrid security, SSE, Security Service Edge, DSPM, data security posture management, zero trust, browser security, data sovereignty, AI agents, agentic AI, cloud security, RSAC Conference 2026, cybersecurity Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the middle of a major incident, security teams face a brutal paradox: the faster things move, the harder it becomes to capture what's actually happening. Cydarm Technologies was built to solve exactly that. Vaughan Shanks, Co-Founder and CEO, describes the platform as a system of record for the SOC -- a purpose-built case management tool that captures who knew what, when, and why, in real time, throughout the lifecycle of an incident. Most of Cydarm's customers sit in government, defense, and critical infrastructure -- organizations where the pressure of regulatory compliance, legal accountability, and board-level reporting is highest. But the value extends well beyond compliance. Shanks draws a direct line from his time in Australian federal government to the philosophy behind Cydarm: good record keeping is good governance. When a capital-I incident is declared, legal, HR, communications, the C-Suite, and the board all need a view in. Cydarm's fine-grained, attribute-based access control makes it possible to give each stakeholder exactly the access they need -- and no more. What sets Cydarm apart from the ticketing systems most teams already have? Shanks puts it plainly: ITSM was built for IT service management, not adversarial cyber threats. The volume, velocity, and variety of SecOps are simply different. Cydarm is designed to feel more like WhatsApp and less like ITSM -- rich data format support, Easy Connect integrations, and a collaborative experience built specifically for high-frequency security operations. Teams that have built workarounds in existing tools know the maintenance burden that comes with it. Cydarm eliminates that mess. The post-incident dimension is where the system of record pays compounding dividends. Shanks outlines three paths: individual incident reports with adjustable significance levels for different audiences; longitudinal metrics capture that reveals the threat environment your controls aren't blocking; and resource justification data that gives security leaders the evidence to defend headcount and budgets. One customer -- a security leader at a major household brand -- had never experienced a breach, and had long struggled to justify the size of their team. With Cydarm's metrics, they finally had the data to make the argument. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Vaughan Shanks, Co-Founder and CEO, Cydarm Technologieshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/vaughan-shanks/ RESOURCES Cydarm Technologies: https://www.cydarm.com KEYWORDS Vaughan Shanks, Cydarm Technologies, Sean Martin, brand spotlight, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, cyber incident response, SOC case management, security operations, incident management platform, system of record, RSAC Conference 2026, NIST incident response, playbook management, SecOps, ITSM alternatives, post-incident review, threat metrics, CISO accountability Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Most enterprise authentication today is still built on passwords or one-time codes -- and neither is phishing-resistant. Alexander Summerer explains that fraud remains the core challenge: attackers intercept credentials in the online channel, and users are burdened with complex password policies that slow them down without making them safer. Swissbit's answer is the iShield Key, a FIDO2-based hardware security key that is plug and play. No passwords to remember, no codes to intercept, and no chance for a phishing attack to succeed. What sets Swissbit apart at RSAC Conference 2026 is convergence. The same iShield Key that authenticates a user at their workstation can also open a door. Tap it on an HID reader in a healthcare facility, a university, or a manufacturing plant, and access is granted -- physical and digital, in one device. Swissbit is the only vendor on the market today offering this combination, with HID Seos support now available and a global partner network ready to deploy at scale. The forward story is post-quantum cryptography. Alexander Summerer notes that quantum computing poses a real and coming threat to standard authentication algorithms. Swissbit is already previewing a PQC evaluation platform at booth 6565 -- a device that runs a post-quantum chip alongside the traditional chip. Organizations can upgrade to PQC-protected authentication with the same hardware, keeping legacy use cases running without disruption. This is a Brand Highlight. A Brand Highlight is a ~5 minute introductory conversation designed to put a spotlight on the guest and their company. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#highlight GUEST Alexander Summerer, Head of Authentication, Swissbit LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-summerer RESOURCES Swissbit: https://www.swissbit.com iShield Key product page: https://www.swissbit.com/en/products/security-products/ishield-key/ Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Alexander Summerer, Swissbit, Sean Martin, RSAC Conference 2026, hardware security key, FIDO2, phishing-resistant authentication, passwordless authentication, physical access control, post-quantum cryptography, PQC, iShield Key, HID Seos, enterprise authentication, zero trust, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand highlight Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

At RSAC Conference 2026, the floor at Moscone Center was buzzing with talk of AI -- but underneath the excitement, a sharper question was forming: are enterprises actually ready to secure the AI systems they are rushing to deploy? Ed Wright, VP of Product Marketing at Menlo Security, joined Sean Martin on-site to dig into exactly that question. With 85 percent of knowledge workers now operating primarily through a browser, Menlo Security has spent 13 years building the infrastructure to protect that surface -- and the threat landscape has just taken a significant turn. The traditional browser threat model centers on humans: phishing links, malicious downloads, social engineering, deepfake video scams. Enterprises have spent billions on SSE stacks and endpoint protection stacks. Yet attacks continue to multiply. What Menlo Security is now tracking is a second threat model layered on top -- one designed specifically for AI agents. Agents use browsers to acquire data and complete tasks, often spinning up hundreds or thousands of headless browser sessions outside the enterprise perimeter, invisible to network security tools that only monitor the wire. The threat profile for agents is distinct. Where a human might miss a suspicious link, an agent reads white-on-white text and zero-font-size characters embedded in web pages -- classic prompt injection techniques. Agents are maniacally focused on task completion and do not naturally separate instructions from data. A co-opted agent, redirected through hidden instructions, will pursue its new goal with the same single-mindedness as its original one. Ed Wright notes that the top concern among CISOs at the RSAC Conference CISO bootcamp -- confirmed by a live audience poll -- is data exfiltration from agents: an agent accessing files, scraping internal pages, passing data to external LLMs, and moving sensitive information outside the organization. Menlo Security's response is a unified browser security platform that applies a single policy framework to both human and agentic workloads. The platform is built on four pillars: threat prevention including zero-day protection, secure application access, data security through AI Adaptive DLP, and file security. AI Adaptive DLP is the capability Ed Wright emphasizes most -- it functions as a combination of DLP and DSPM, discovering and classifying sensitive data across the organization and masking it in real time rather than blocking access. When traditional DLP blocks a human, they call IT. When it blocks an agent, the workflow silently fails. AI Adaptive DLP eliminates that failure mode entirely, keeping workflows uninterrupted while sensitive data stays protected at the source. The unification argument cuts through a crowded point-solution market. Rather than deploying separate tools for prompt injection, file security, and application access, Menlo Security delivers a single layer of visibility and observability across the entire workforce. Single policies. Single set of capabilities. No stitching together of forensic data from disconnected systems. Ed Wright points to a Fortune 500 customer that deployed 20,000-plus agents in a short window after a board mandate -- and quickly realized they had no security guardrails in place for browser-based agentic activity. The emergency call to Menlo Security was not the first of its kind, and it will not be the last. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Ed Wright, VP of Product Marketing, Menlo Security LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwardwright1/ RESOURCES Menlo Security: https://www.menlosecurity.com Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Ed Wright, Menlo Security, Sean Martin, browser security, agentic AI security, AI agents, headless browsers, prompt injection, data exfiltration, AI Adaptive DLP, DSPM, zero-day threats, enterprise browser, SSE, RSAC Conference 2026, brand spotlight, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Arkose Labs sits at the intersection of bot management, fraud prevention, and identity protection -- working with the world's largest consumer-facing brands to make fraud unprofitable. Frank Teruel walks through how the threat landscape shifted from nation-state actors and organized crime to fully democratized crime-as-a-service platforms, where MFA bypass kits are sold online and multi-billion dollar fraud operations run with the efficiency of a product company. The conversation covers three of the biggest attack categories hitting organizations today: SMS toll fraud, bonus abuse, and fake account registrations. Each one exploits legitimate business flows -- onboarding, loyalty programs, referral bonuses -- and often goes entirely undetected by security teams because the attackers never trigger a traditional alert. In one example, a rideshare company's cell bill climbed by millions before anyone connected it to a fraud campaign. With agentic AI now in the mix, the attribution problem has become exponentially harder. Is that agent booking a hotel room a legitimate user action or the opening move of an account takeover? Arkose Labs places its defenses at the very top of the funnel -- registration and login flows -- combining risk scoring, challenge technology, a 24/7 SOC, and a dark web intelligence program called ACTOR. When a novel attack technique surfaces in gaming, Arkose Labs writes a global mitigation; when that same technique hits banking two days later, the defense is already deployed. Frank Teruel closes with a direct message to CISOs: 75% of organizations surveyed cannot perform attribution, and 97% expect a major AI-driven incident within the next 12 months. The signal to watch for is not always in the security stack -- it shows up in rising SMS bills, unusual account-linking activity, and transaction abandonment rates that do not match marketing spend. The answer is internal fusion: security, fraud, finance, and operations sharing data before the incident, not after. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Frank Teruel, Chief Operating Officer, Arkose Labshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/frankteruel/ RESOURCES Arkose Labs: https://www.arkoselabs.com RSAC Conference 2026: https://www.rsaconference.com Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Frank Teruel, Arkose Labs, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand spotlight, fraud prevention, bot management, account security, SMS toll fraud, agentic AI, fraud deterrence, identity protection, crime as a service, RSAC Conference 2026, CISO, account takeover, fake account registration, bonus abuse, loyalty fraud, federated threat intelligence Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

ISACA has stepped into a defining role in the CMMC ecosystem, taking over as the CMMC Assessor and Instructor Certification Organization -- the CAICO -- for the U.S. Department of War's Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program. Recorded live at RSAC Conference 2026, this conversation with Todd Gagnon, the Director of the CAICO at ISACA, gets right to the heart of what that means for cybersecurity professionals, defense contractors, and anyone thinking about where their career intersects with the defense industrial base. The CMMC program exists to solve a persistent problem: too many companies doing business with the federal government had failed to properly implement required cybersecurity controls. Built around NIST 800-171's 110 security requirements, CMMC demands third-party, independent verification -- and that means a large, trained, credentialed assessor workforce. ISACA's role is to build and certify exactly that. Todd Gagnon walks through the two foundational credentials at the center of this effort: the CMMC Certified Professional (CCP) as the entry point, and the CMMC Certified Assessor (CCA) as the operational core. With roughly 800 credentialed professionals in the current ecosystem against a need measured in thousands, the stakes and the urgency are clear. What makes this conversation practically useful is the range of people it speaks to. Gagnon lays out who should be thinking about a CCP -- including professionals early in their careers and organizations that want internal staff who truly understand the CMMC framework, not just outside consultants. He explains the C3PAO model, how subcontractor compliance flows through the ecosystem, and why NIST 800-171 is a strong cybersecurity foundation regardless of whether an organization ever touches a government contract. The certification pathway is open to non-ISACA members, the CCP is designed to be accessible, and the knowledge transfers well beyond the federal contracting context. ISACA is also moving ahead of the curve: with NIST having released Revision 3 of 800-171, ISACA is already developing training content for the transition -- targeting late 2025 delivery so that a wave of Revision 3-ready professionals will be in place when the Department of War makes the regulatory shift. Todd Gagnon closes with a candid ask for patience as the April 1st transition from Cyber AB to ISACA takes effect, along with a clear statement of intent: the credentials issued under ISACA's watch should stand for something. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Todd Gagnon, Director, CMMC Assessor & Instructor Certification Organization (CAICO) at ISACA LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-gagnon-90b8a6264/ RESOURCES ISACA CMMC Certification Hub: https://www.isaca.org/cmmc ISACA Official Website: https://www.isaca.org KEYWORDS Todd Gagnon, ISACA, Sean Martin, Marco Ciappelli, CMMC, Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, CAICO, CCP, CCA, NIST 800-171, Defense Industrial Base, cybersecurity certification, DoD compliance, government contractors, brand spotlight, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, RSAC Conference 2026 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The cybersecurity industry is good at finding problems. What it has struggled with -- for decades -- is fixing them. Sunil Gottumukkala, CEO and Co-Founder of Averlon, calls this the exposure window: the gap between when a vulnerability is discovered and when it is actually resolved. That gap is where real risk lives, and closing it is the founding mission of Averlon. Speaking on location at RSAC Conference 2026, Gottumukkala draws on his experience as a security executive at Salesforce to explain why even the most well-resourced teams fall behind. More code, more acquisitions, and more attack surface means more findings -- but the capacity to remediate does not scale at the same rate. The answer, he argues, is not more people. It is better systems. Averlon approaches the problem by ingesting findings from across a customer's security stack, applying AI-driven analysis to determine what is actually exploitable in that specific environment, and eliminating noise. From there, rather than generating a ticket, the platform generates a fix -- actual code changes for application vulnerabilities, or compensating controls for situations requiring more time. The goal is not to manage vulnerabilities. It is to eliminate them. This is a Brand Highlight. A Brand Highlight is a ~5 minute introductory conversation designed to put a spotlight on the guest and their company. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#highlight GUEST Sunil Gottumukkala, CEO & Co-Founder, Averlonhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilgottumukkala/ RESOURCES Averlon: https://www.averlon.ai Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Sunil Gottumukkala, Averlon, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand highlight, vulnerability remediation, remediation operations, exposure window, cloud security, agentic AI, CVSS, vulnerability management, RSAC Conference 2026, RSAC 2026, cybersecurity Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The security operations center is under pressure from every direction -- rising alert volumes, fragmented data environments, and a skills gap that no amount of hiring fully closes. At RSAC Conference 2026, Monzy Merza of Crogl sat down with Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli to talk about what the AI-enabled SOC actually looks like when it is working at enterprise scale. Crogl recently published the State of the AI SOC report, a survey of more than 600 organizations. The headline finding: nearly 40% of alerts go completely unattended. Not triaged. Not escalated. Just missed. The report also found that a large share of respondents rank the security of an AI system above its raw capability -- trust before performance. Merza says the goal of the report was part data, part demystification, and part empathy building -- giving security leaders permission to recognize that everyone is dealing with the same problems. Crogl's knowledge engine is built on a foundational premise: data is fragmented in the enterprise, and that is not going to change. Rather than requiring data normalization before analysis, Crogl builds an enterprise semantic knowledge graph that maps relationships across data lakes, SIEMs, and SOAR platforms, wherever the data lives. Analysts no longer need to navigate schemas or query languages. Crogl handles the investigation and surfaces what matters. Merza describes two compressor effects his customers experience. A competency compressor allows any analyst to draw on multiple data lakes at once. A domain knowledge compressor lets Crogl work across alert types -- phishing, endpoint, and beyond -- rather than routing each to a specialist. The result is a team that operates well above its apparent headcount. One customer example: a CISA advisory that would take hours to manually parse can be uploaded into Crogl and assessed across the enterprise footprint -- IOC mapping and detection coverage -- in sub-hours. The same logic extends to compliance, where audit data calls that once required manual query-by-query execution can now be executed by Crogl against a full 500-query data call at once. On the jobs question, Merza takes a clear position: AI will create more security jobs, not fewer. Every new AI deployment is a new attack surface. Every new footprint needs to be defended. The repetitive tier-one work is going away -- but the volume of meaningful security work is expanding and the entry level is rising. The organizations getting ahead of this are already standing up AI review boards and putting security capability at the center of how they evaluate new AI tools. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Monzy Merza, Co-Founder and CEO, Crogl LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monzymerza RESOURCES State of the AI SOC Report (free download): https://www.crogl.com Crogl: https://www.crogl.com AI SOC Summit: https://aisocsummit.com Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Monzy Merza, Crogl, Sean Martin, Marco Ciappelli, brand spotlight, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand story, AI SOC, security operations center, SOC automation, AI in cybersecurity, alert fatigue, security data lakes, SIEM integration, enterprise knowledge graph, threat intelligence, CISA advisory, Volt Typhoon, RSAC Conference 2026, RSAC 2026, cybersecurity AI, autonomous investigation, SOC analysts, security workforce, CISO strategy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

At RSAC Conference 2026, the expo floor runs on one word: AI. But Lisa Liu, Corporate Marketing and Communications Manager at Stellar Cyber, has been watching the confusion this creates in real time. Visitors at the Stellar Cyber booth are asking the same question: does AI in cybersecurity mean a tool that fights AI-powered attackers, a tool that is AI-based, or something else entirely? Lisa Liu's take is direct -- if your messaging can't answer that question, the noise is winning. Stellar Cyber has been building toward a human-augmented, autonomous SOC for years -- long before "agentic" became the conference password. The logic driving that mission is not about market positioning. It is about what happens when AI makes a mistake at scale. One error in judgment can echo a thousandfold. Human oversight is not a limitation on the platform -- it is the architecture. The goal is not to put a human on the sidelines as a safety check. The goal is to make every analyst perform at a higher level, so a junior analyst works at the capability of a senior analyst. Lisa Liu draws on the Waymo analogy familiar to anyone walking the streets of San Francisco this week: autonomous vehicles went from having a safety driver present to running solo. But when a power outage knocked out every Waymo unit simultaneously, the city needed humans to step in immediately. The same principle applies to security operations. Agentic AI is changing the analyst's role -- replacing alert fatigue and log chasing with higher-order problem solving -- but human involvement in the process is not going away. For SOC teams asking how to get there, Lisa Liu is clear: success is not a rip-and-replace project. Success is minimal personnel disruption and maximum operational efficiency -- repositioning existing tools to work smarter without exposing the organization to weeks of vulnerability during a rebuild. Stellar Cyber's platform integrates with existing SIEMs and tools, adds coverage across network, endpoint, identity, and cloud environments, and offers hundreds of pre-built integrations with more being added continuously. For managed security service providers serving clients across different industries and risk profiles, that kind of unified visibility is what makes the business model scale. The outcomes are specific. One Stellar Cyber customer reported that analysts were 83% more accurate in their threat environment analysis. Lisa Liu frames that number carefully: analysts are not measured by what they catch -- they are measured by what they miss. Any meaningful improvement in accuracy is not just a business metric. It changes how people feel about their work. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Lisa Liu, Corporate Marketing and Communications Manager, Stellar Cyberhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/lisaaliu/ RESOURCES Stellar Cyber: https://stellarcyber.ai Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Lisa Liu, Stellar Cyber, Sean Martin, RSAC Conference 2026, human-augmented SOC, autonomous SOC, AI-native security operations, Multi-Layer AI, MSSP security platform, SOC analyst efficiency, alert triage, agentic AI cybersecurity, brand spotlight, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A decade ago, Kevin Gosschalk was talking CAPTCHAs and bot mitigation with Marco Ciappelli at a security conference. Today, at RSAC Conference 2026, the conversation has shifted to agentic AI -- autonomous systems that browse, click, and transact on behalf of users. For Gosschalk, the Founder and CEO of Arkose Labs, the technology has changed but the challenge is familiar: how do you tell the difference between a legitimate automated actor and a malicious one? Gosschalk explains that the vast majority of agentic traffic today is not self-identifying. Rather than announcing themselves as AI agents, these systems impersonate real Chrome browsers on Mac OS -- choosing configurations with stronger privacy features to evade fingerprinting. There are two technical categories to contend with: headless browsers running in the cloud, which can be caught through device spoofing checks, and on-device agents that control a real browser instance, which require a deeper look at behavioral patterns and intent signals. Arkose Labs builds intent models around payment fraud, fake account creation, and account compromise to distinguish the good agents from the bad. The economic framing Gosschalk brings to this conversation is striking. He describes SMS toll fraud -- where bad actors acquire millions of premium phone numbers and trigger OTP messages from victim companies, earning three to six cents per message while costing those companies tens of millions of dollars annually. He walks through micro deposit fraud targeting fintechs. His core thesis: fraud is an economic activity, and the best defense is making attacks more expensive than they are worth. Arkose Labs builds challenge mechanisms designed to raise that cost through novel stimuli that ML models have not been trained to solve -- presenting something genuinely new forces a brute-force approach that is less effective than purpose-built attacks. The platform's consortium model is a key differentiator. Arkose Labs protects large enterprises including Expedia and Meta, and when an attack signature appears on one customer but nowhere else in the network, its uniqueness is itself a strong fraud signal. Customers can also feed labeled outcome data back into the system -- if something slips through and later proves malicious, that label sharpens the model for the entire consortium. Gosschalk is equally clear about the opportunity side of agentic AI. Blocking all automated traffic is no longer viable -- legitimate agentic commerce is coming, where consumers will delegate shopping, comparison, and purchasing to AI assistants. The future is not blanket blocking but granular, policy-driven enforcement: letting each customer define what kinds of agentic behavior they want to permit on their platforms. Integration is accessible -- a basic JavaScript deployment for web, SDKs for mobile, and extended support for IoT devices and CDN integrations. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Kevin Gosschalk, Founder and CEO, Arkose Labs LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kgosschalk/ RESOURCES Arkose Labs: https://www.arkoselabs.com Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Kevin Gosschalk, Arkose Labs, Sean Martin, Marco Ciappelli, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand spotlight, agentic AI, bot detection, bot mitigation, fraud prevention, SMS toll fraud, micro deposit fraud, behavioral biometrics, intent detection, CAPTCHA, account takeover, synthetic identity, RSAC Conference 2026, cybersecurity Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Vijit Nair, VP of Product Management at Corelight, joins Sean Martin on the floor of RSAC Conference 2026 for a conversation about what it takes to move security operations from AI-assisted to AI-autonomous. Corelight is the fastest-growing company in the network detection and response (NDR) space, and Nair has spent six years helping build the platform from early network monitoring to its current position as a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader. The company's open NDR platform transforms raw network traffic into high-fidelity, unopinionated evidence -- and that evidence is now powering the next leap: agentic triage. Corelight's newly launched Agentic Triage product moves beyond the "level one" AI assistant model -- where a system answers questions but takes no action -- to a "level two" agent that actually investigates and triages alerts. It identifies the riskiest entities in an environment, collects all associated context and data, runs a full investigation cycle, and delivers a verdict with full evidence attached. Nair calls it "bringing the receipts": analysts see not just the conclusion but every step of the reasoning. Early results show a 10x increase in investigation speed and 60-70% of alerts being automatically triaged. The network is having a resurgence as an essential visibility layer, and Nair explains why: attackers have adapted to EDR. Nation-state-style campaigns like Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon operate in the network layer, targeting unmanaged devices, routers, firewalls, and VPNs that endpoint tools cannot see. Corelight almost always finds something in the first 30 days of a pilot deployment -- from shadow IT and shadow VPNs to active red team attacks using tools like Sliver-based C2 frameworks. On the question of SOC adoption, Nair pushes back on the assumption that hesitation comes from the top. The hunger for AI-powered tools runs from CISOs all the way down to the analysts dealing with alert overload and understaffed teams. A recent customer put it simply: "This is amazing. Please don't take it away from me." Nair frames the path to full autonomy as a spectrum -- from human-controlled to fully agentic -- and draws the comparison to Waymo: the journey is measured and incremental, but the destination is inevitable. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Vijit Nair, VP of Product Management, Corelighthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/vijitn RESOURCES Corelight: https://corelight.com Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Vijit Nair, Corelight, Sean Martin, network detection and response, NDR, agentic triage, AI SOC, autonomous security operations, SOC automation, network security monitoring, threat detection, AI-powered security, RSAC Conference 2026, brand spotlight, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Most organizations are not waiting for permission to deploy AI agents -- they are already in production, often without a clear picture of what those agents can access or who is accountable for them. Token Security was built specifically for this moment, and being named an RSAC Conference Innovation Sandbox finalist is confirmation that the market is catching up to the problem the company has been solving since 2023. Itamar Apelblat, co-founder and CEO, and Ido Shlomo, co-founder and CTO, came out of Israel's elite intelligence unit 8200 -- Apelblat from the defensive security side and Shlomo from offensive cyber operations. That shared background, and 17 years of partnership, shapes how Token Security approaches a problem that most identity vendors have not yet reckoned with: AI agents are not humans, and they are not standard machine identities either. The core concept is intent-based access management. Rather than looking at an agent's historical behavior and extending permissions based on the past, Token Security asks: what is this agent supposed to do? What is its purpose? Restrictions are then built around that intent. As Apelblat explains, agents are non-deterministic -- they will pursue a goal through whatever path is available, including ones you did not anticipate or want. Locking down access based on intent rather than history is the only approach that holds. Shlomo adds a dimension that makes the risk concrete: an AI agent forgets everything between sessions. Every interaction starts fresh. That means it does not remember a previous attack attempt. A sophisticated adversary who manipulates an agent today can try the exact same technique tomorrow. Combine that with the agent's relentless drive to satisfy its directive -- even to the point of deleting data or modifying infrastructure if that is what it takes -- and the case for an isolated, intent-scoped perimeter becomes clear. The customer journey at Token Security almost always begins after deployment. Organizations arrive saying, in effect: we think we have agents out there, can you help us find them? Visibility comes first -- discovering what agents exist, understanding their usage, mapping ownership, managing lifecycle. Policy enforcement comes after. Critically, Token Security achieves this without sitting as an inline broker. The platform connects to both the agent platforms and the business applications those agents reach, creating enforcement at both ends without introducing friction into developer workflows. Apelblat frames the architecture in terms of micro agents: purpose-specific, narrowly scoped, each with a well-defined role. Not one agent doing everything -- thousands of focused agents, each constrained to exactly what it needs. Shlomo puts the business case plainly: an agent with properly managed identity is not a chatbot, it is a member of a digital workforce. Get identity right, and the productivity multiplier is enormous. Get it wrong, and a single compromised agent can cascade across every connected system it touches. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUESTS Itamar Apelblat, Co-Founder & CEO, Token Securityhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/itamar-apelblat/ Ido Shlomo, Co-Founder & CTO, Token Securityhttps://il.linkedin.com/in/ido--shlomo RESOURCES Token Security website: https://www.token.security/ Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Itamar Apelblat, Ido Shlomo, Token Security, Sean Martin, Marco Ciappelli, brand spotlight, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand story, AI agent security, AI agent identity, non-human identity, NHI security, intent-based access management, privileged access management, zero trust, RSAC Conference 2026, Innovation Sandbox, identity lifecycle management, agentic AI security, cybersecurity Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

At RSAC Conference 2026, Eric Herzog, Chief Marketing Officer of Infinidat, sat down with Sean Martin for a booth-side Brand Highlight that reframes a familiar blind spot. Infinidat is a high-end enterprise storage company serving global Fortune 500 organizations and mid-range managed service providers -- and Herzog argues that leaving storage out of a corporate cybersecurity strategy means leaving the largest concentration of enterprise data exposed. Infinidat embeds cybersecurity directly into its storage platform through InfiniSafe, a software suite that has earned recognition from both storage and cybersecurity analysts. The centerpiece of the offering is a written guarantee: any dataset, regardless of size, will be recovered in one minute or less. Herzog explains that this is backed by immutable snapshots that cannot be altered or deleted, a management plane separated from the data plane, and AI/ML-powered scanning through InfiniSafe Cyber Detection that validates a snapshot is clean before it is restored. The goal is a "known good copy" -- a forensically clean snapshot that can be brought back with confidence. Herzog notes that security teams often focus on confidentiality and availability while underweighting integrity. Infinidat's approach addresses all three: snapshots are verified clean, recovery is fast, and the process is demonstrable in live proof-of-concept environments. At the beginning of April 2026, Infinidat recovered six petabytes in three seconds in a live demo. This is a Brand Highlight. A Brand Highlight is a ~5 minute introductory conversation designed to put a spotlight on the guest and their company. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#highlight GUEST Eric Herzog, Chief Marketing Officer, Infinidat LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erherzog RESOURCES Infinidat Website: https://www.infinidat.com Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Eric Herzog, Infinidat, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand highlight, enterprise storage, cybersecurity, ransomware recovery, data protection, InfiniSafe, immutable snapshots, cyber resilience, RSAC Conference 2026, next generation data protection, MSP security, storage security Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Security teams have always struggled with the gap between finding vulnerabilities and fixing the right ones. DeCloss built PlexTrac after seeing that gap firsthand as a penetration tester -- watching critical findings disappear into static PDFs and manual spreadsheets with no real tracking, no accountability, and no way to demonstrate improvement. The platform was designed from the ground up to close that loop. The conversation gets specific about what contextual risk scoring actually means. A CVE rated 10.0 in the National Vulnerability Database may be irrelevant to a given organization; a lower-severity finding may be critical given the systems that organization actually runs. PlexTrac's newly launched MCP server correlates vulnerability data against real-world environmental context, making that distinction automated and actionable -- not something an analyst has to puzzle out manually every time. DeCloss walks through what the before state looks like for most teams: an annual pentest PDF, weekly scanner output, no unified view, and spreadsheet-based assignment that makes it nearly impossible to track who is working on what or whether anything is actually getting resolved. PlexTrac replaces that with a normalized, integrated platform that connects to Jira, ServiceNow, and Azure DevOps -- keeping workflows intact while adding the visibility that was always missing. On AI's role in the industry, DeCloss is measured but direct. AI is a force multiplier, not a job eliminator. Security has always operated with a talent shortage, and automation fills that gap. But AI also expands the attack surface -- and organizations that adopt it without a security framework create new exposure. The human in the loop, with real subject matter expertise, remains essential. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Daniel DeCloss, Founder & CTO, PlexTrachttps://www.linkedin.com/in/ddecloss/ RESOURCES PlexTrac: https://plextrac.com KEYWORDS Daniel DeCloss, PlexTrac, Sean Martin, vulnerability management, penetration testing, pentest reporting, risk prioritization, CVE scoring, MCP server, AI in cybersecurity, blue team, remediation tracking, CTEM, continuous threat exposure management, RSAC Conference 2026, brand spotlight, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand story Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Security teams have more data than ever -- and less confidence in it. Angelos Kottas, VP of Product and Corporate Marketing at Axonius, opens by sharing a striking finding from the Axonius Actionability Report: 55% of CISOs still run their environments off spreadsheets, and fewer than 20% have daily updates to their asset data. The result is a gap between what organizations think they know and what is actually happening across their digital real estate. Axonius was founded in 2017 after its co-founders witnessed a Fortune 100 retailer go into crisis during a live security incident -- unable to identify which assets were impacted or who owned them. That founding story still frames the company's mission: give security teams a comprehensive, enriched, and current view of every asset so they can stop flying blind. But Kottas argues that visibility alone is no longer the goal. Axonius launched its exposure management product at RSAC Conference 2025 -- its most successful product launch to date -- and the message from customers is consistent: what used to take weeks now takes hours or minutes. The platform now enables teams to move from discovery to coverage gap analysis to prioritized remediation, all in one place. The business case is real. Texas A&M University used Axonius to gamify risk reduction across its decentralized schools and divisions, turning remediation into a leaderboard and dramatically accelerating time to closure. An entertainment company customer used Axonius during the 2024 CrowdStrike Blue Screen of Death incident to scope its impact and build a remediation plan in minutes -- delaying operations by just five minutes, while others faced days of disruption. Kottas also addresses the AI question head-on. He frames it as AI squared: the foundation for artificial intelligence is asset intelligence. Agentic AI and autonomous SOC workflows are only as reliable as the data underneath them. Conflicting endpoint counts across EDR, CMDB, and other tools produce dirty data that undermines AI trust. Axonius solves this by delivering a deduplicated, enriched asset graph with business context layered in -- so AI systems can make recommendations organizations can actually act on. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Angelos Kottas, VP of Product and Corporate Marketing, Axonius LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amkottas/ RESOURCES Axonius website: https://www.axonius.com Axonius Actionability Report: https://www.axonius.com (available on the Axonius website) Adapt 2026 (annual customer conference, April 15, New York City): https://www.axonius.com Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Angelos Kottas, Axonius, Sean Martin, asset intelligence, exposure management, cyber asset attack surface management, CAASM, vulnerability management, actionability, CISO visibility, AI in cybersecurity, agentic AI, asset discovery, coverage gap analysis, incident response, RSAC Conference 2026, brand spotlight, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

At RSAC Conference 2026, Dr. Chris Pierson, Founder and CEO of BlackCloak, sat down with Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli for a conversation that has become something of an annual tradition. What started in 2018 as a category BlackCloak largely invented -- digital executive protection -- has become one of the most pressing concerns in enterprise security. Adversaries have figured out that the easiest path into a company often runs straight through the personal lives of its leaders: the About Us page, the board listing, the family members visible on social media. BlackCloak was built to close that gap. BlackCloak announced at RSAC Conference 2026 the launch of its new travel advisory platform -- a tool designed to give executives and their families actionable, real-time intelligence when traveling domestically or internationally. Pierson explained that CISOs and CSOs are increasingly being asked questions that go well beyond network security: what are the crime trends in this city, what embassy contacts are needed, which areas should be avoided? The platform distills complex, fast-moving threat intelligence into concise briefings -- four or five pages, mobile-accessible, and built for the executive and the family members traveling alongside them. On the privacy side, BlackCloak introduced Search Suppression -- a new feature that goes further than data broker removal alone. Even after information is scrubbed from the major data broker sites, traces of personally identifiable information can persist across the open internet. Search Suppression identifies those instances and requests their removal from search engine results, shrinking the digital footprint that attackers use to build targeted OSINT profiles. And because the threat surface shifts as executives' children age and begin generating their own data trails, the platform monitors continuously -- not just at a single point in time. Pierson also addressed the deepfake threat head-on. BlackCloak re-released its Impersonation Protection feature with deeper capabilities specifically designed for this problem. Plugin-based detection tools for Teams or Zoom leave the most common attack vectors -- phone calls, text messages, WhatsApp, Signal -- completely unaddressed. Impersonation Protection allows members to push a quick identity-verification request through the BlackCloak app to anyone in their trusted circle, regardless of how the original communication arrived. If verification fails, alarm notifications fire to both the CISO and the BlackCloak team. In a world where high-quality deepfake audio and video can be synthesized from publicly available earnings call recordings and media appearances, slowing down to verify through a trusted channel is one of the most reliable defenses available. The conversation closed on the concept of trust -- a word Pierson returned to repeatedly. It is, he said, the reason people choose BlackCloak. The relationships the company builds with CISOs, CSOs, and the executives and families they protect require trust that is built carefully and maintained continuously. As BlackCloak scales, preserving that culture is something Pierson thinks about deeply. For a company whose entire business is built on protecting people in their most personal digital spaces, trust is not just a value. It is the product. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Dr. Chris Pierson, Founder and CEO, BlackCloakhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/drchristopherpierson/ RESOURCES BlackCloak official website: https://blackcloak.io BlackCloak Digital Executive Protection Platform: https://blackcloak.io/product/ Request a BlackCloak demo: https://blackcloak.io/executives/ Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Dr. Chris Pierson, BlackCloak, Sean Martin, Marco Ciappelli, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand spotlight, digital executive protection, executive cybersecurity, personal cybersecurity, deepfake defense, impersonation protection, travel advisory security, search suppression, data broker removal, OSINT, executive privacy, RSAC Conference 2026, RSAC 2026, cybersecurity, privacy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

At RSAC Conference 2026, the noise is relentless. Vendor booths, AI pitches, and breathless marketing compete for attention at every turn. Michael Parisi, Chief Growth Officer at Steel Patriot Partners, joins Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli on the ground in San Francisco to name what too few are willing to say out loud: most of the conversation happening on the show floor does not reflect the conversations that actually matter. The real exchanges, Parisi says, are happening backstage -- in the hallways, over coffee, between practitioners who trust each other enough to ask: does this vendor actually do what they say? That shift back to peer-driven trust is not a trend. It is a correction. Security leaders are exhausted and fragile, operating under intense pressure, and they are returning to the relationships they know rather than the research tools and AI-generated answers they do not trust. Steel Patriot Partners was built around exactly that dynamic. Their operating principle -- business owners first, engineers second, compliance and security people third -- runs counter to how most consulting firms approach an engagement. Rather than leading with frameworks or certifications, the team starts by asking what outcome the client is actually trying to achieve. Parisi is candid about how often that conversation leads them to steer a client away from the path they came in convinced they needed. That willingness to say no -- and mean it -- is what sets a trusted advisor apart from a vendor. The outcome-first philosophy shapes every engagement. As founder Jason Ford says, 80% of what Steel Patriot Partners does is a therapy session. Organizations coming in with complex compliance challenges -- FedRAMP, CMMC, HITRUST, DoD IL -- need more than a checklist. They need a partner who has lived those journeys themselves, made the mistakes, and can speak honestly about what is worth pursuing and what is not. Parisi's advice to anyone evaluating a consulting partner is pointed: ask the question up and down the team, not just of the founder. The firms that have genuinely lived what they sell -- and can talk about the failures as clearly as the successes -- are the ones worth trusting when the stakes are high. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Michael Parisi, Chief Growth Officer, Steel Patriot Partners LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-parisi-4009b2261/ RESOURCES Steel Patriot Partners: https://www.steelpatriotpartners.com Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Michael Parisi, Steel Patriot Partners, Sean Martin, brand spotlight, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, cybersecurity consulting, compliance advisory, FedRAMP, CMMC, HITRUST, DoD IL, trusted advisor, outcome-based consulting, vendor trust, cybersecurity noise, RSAC Conference 2026, security leadership, GRC, business risk, human in the loop Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

At RSAC Conference 2026, Anthony Cusimano, Chief Evangelist and Director of Solutions Marketing at Object First, joins Sean Martin on the show floor to break down what separates truly immutable storage from the checkbox version. The answer comes down to zero access: no command line interface, no root access, no administrative back doors at any layer -- for customers or for Object First itself. Object First appliances are purpose-built for Veeam and ship with S3 protocol storage in automatic compliance mode, versioning, and object lock. Once data is written and a retention period is set, nothing -- no admin, no attacker, not even the vendor -- can touch it. Cusimano describes the architecture as a storage utility, not an administration platform: Veeam handles all backup policy and configuration; Object First handles one thing only, ensuring the data cannot be erased. The statistics behind the design are sobering. According to Cusimano, 96 percent of ransomware attacks specifically target backup data -- a figure validated across four independent industry surveys. Organizations that rely on encryption alone, without immutable storage, are leaving a critical gap that attackers have learned to exploit. Many do not discover that gap until recovery is already underway. Cusimano also makes the case for recovery testing as a security priority in its own right. He recommends full tabletop exercises that assume worst-case conditions: every admin credential compromised, active directory gone. Teams that run through this process discover gaps in their architecture that no amount of vendor documentation will surface. His practical tip -- collect coworkers' cell phone numbers before an incident -- reflects just how complete the communications blackout can be when directory services fail. Two capabilities from Object First round out the conversation. Fleet Manager, launching May 6th, gives managed service providers and large enterprises a single SaaS dashboard to manage all Object First instances with unified telemetry and honeypot visibility -- with no backup data leaving the appliance. And the honeypot feature, included on every device at no cost, simulates a Veeam backup and replication server as a decoy. When agentic AI-driven attacks probe the environment, they interact with the honeypot exactly as they would a real target, triggering alerts that can surface threats days or weeks before a full attack develops. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Anthony Cusimano, Chief Evangelist & Director of Solutions Marketing, Object First LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonycusimano89/ RESOURCES Object First website: https://objectfirst.com ITSPmagazine RSAC Conference 2026 coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/rsac-2026-conference-san-francisco-usa-cybersecurity-event-infosec-conference-coverage Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Anthony Cusimano, Object First, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand spotlight, ransomware, immutable storage, backup security, Veeam, data protection, RSAC Conference 2026, cyber resilience, absolute immutability, ransomware recovery, Fleet Manager, honeypot detection, managed service providers, zero trust storage Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has been rethinking what it means to secure an enterprise network -- and the answer they keep arriving at is that security cannot be an afterthought. At RSAC Conference 2026, Mounir Hahad, Head of HPE Threat Labs, sat down with Sean Martin to walk through what that philosophy looks like in practice and what two major announcements at the show mean for security teams. One of those announcements is the HPE AI firewall -- a solution built specifically for organizations trying to govern how employees use generative AI tools without shutting down innovation. Mounir Hahad frames the challenge directly: gen AI has doubled the attack surface, and organizations that fail to act risk both data leakage and a loss of confidence in the technology itself. The AI firewall starts with visibility -- showing which AI services employees are using, what data is moving where, and whether private information is leaking to external services -- and then gives administrators the tools to set and enforce policy. The second announcement is the formal launch of HPE Threat Labs, which brings together threat research capabilities from both Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the former Juniper Networks. The combined team covers both threat analysis and vulnerability analysis -- capabilities that were previously siloed. HPE Threat Labs has published its inaugural In the Wild threat report, drawing on telemetry, honeypots, and open-source intelligence to give CISOs and decision makers a clear view of how cybercrime has industrialized, why attacks are increasingly targeted, and why high-confidence alerts matter more than ever. This is a Brand Highlight. A Brand Highlight is a ~5 minute introductory conversation designed to put a spotlight on the guest and their company. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#highlight GUEST Mounir Hahad, Head of HPE Threat Labs, Hewlett Packard Enterprise LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mounirhahad/ RESOURCES HPE Threat Labs: https://www.hpe.com HPE Threat Labs 2026 In the Wild Threat Report: https://www.hpe.com Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Mounir Hahad, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HPE, HPE Threat Labs, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand highlight, AI firewall, generative AI security, network security, threat intelligence, SASE, cybercrime, RSAC Conference 2026, threat research, enterprise security, AI governance, cybersecurity Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Great content doesn't come from chasing perfection — it comes from creating something people can actually feel. In this episode, Darren Rayner shares how brands can build content systems that connect, why authenticity matters more than ever, and what it takes to stand out in a world flooded with content.This is Brand Story, a podcast celebrating the stories of real people who are making an impact on brands, business, and the world around them. Episodes feature guests from a variety of backgrounds who bring their own unique perspectives to the conversation.Brand Story is created and produced by Gravity Group, a full-service brand and marketing agency, and is hosted by Gravity Group President, Steve Gilman.Links and Information From the Episode Here: gravitygroup.com/podcast/content-that-connects/Continue the conversation on social:For more of Brand Story, check out our LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/gravitygroupmarketing), where we'll post previews and highlights of shows, behind-the-scenes sneak peeks, plus other marketing news you can use.We're also on:Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/gravitygroupFacebook — https://www.facebook.com/gravitygroupmarketing(00:00) Introduction to Darren and Magnafire(04:09) The Evolution of Social Media in Brand Strategy(07:11) The Three-Step Content Process(09:56) The Content Pyramid Approach(17:06) The Importance of Audience Understanding(18:24) Emotional Resonance in Content(20:51) Hooks, Kicks, and Engagement Strategies(27:45) Authenticity in Content Creation(30:14) The Role of AI in Content Production(34:39) Innovative Approaches to Content(37:19) Common Mistakes Brands Make(41:07) Life Lessons and Reflections

Your brand story is one of the most powerful tools you have, but most businesses don't know how to tell it. In this episode, Molly sits down with Dennis Williams, co-founder & Partner of 3 Bridges Consulting and former broadcast journalist, to explore what it really means to define and elevate your brand in a crowded market. Dennis makes the case that every trades business should think like a media company, and breaks down the real cost of high-quality video and why AI-driven search is changing where your content needs to live. Practical, honest, and packed with perspective from someone who has built brands from the ground up.

This week's episode of Win The Hour, Win The Day Podcast interviews, Melanie Whittaker.   Does your marketing feel forced or fake? In this episode, PR and marketing expert Melanie Whittaker shares why being yourself is the best way to stand out and build real trust with your audience.   In this powerful talk, you'll learn: -Why people trust businesses more when they see the real person behind them. -How telling simple stories from your life can make your marketing stronger. -Why using too much AI content can make your message sound like everyone else. -How to notice what your audience actually cares about and talk about that more. -Why networking and real conversations help your business grow faster than chasing social media trends.   Get ready for simple, honest insights that will help you show up with confidence and connect with the people who need your work most.   Win The Hour, Win The Day! www.winthehourwintheday.com   Podcast: Win The Hour, Win The Day Podcast   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/winthehourwintheday/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/win-the-hour-win-the-day-podcast   You can Melanie Whittaker at: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melanie.whittaker.315 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-whittaker-836457224/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youareyourmarketing/ Threads: https://www.threads.com/@youareyourmarketing