What's Up with Tech?

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Your AI account is quickly becoming your most valuable account. It can hold business context, customer details, code, research, and the day-to-day workflows you rely on. That also makes it a prime target for phishing and account takeover, especially as attacks get more convincing with AI.

We sit down with Dawn Manley, Senior Vice President of Product Management at Yubico, to unpack what “phishing-resistant MFA” actually means and why hardware-backed authentication changes the game. We compare the familiar world of SMS codes and approval prompts with a physical security key that uses strong cryptography, verifies you are signing into the real service, and requires real user presence. The goal is simple: stop attacks from succeeding instead of expecting every person to spot every scam.

We also dig into Yubico’s partnership with OpenAI to bring stronger account protection to ChatGPT through OpenAI’s advanced account security program. We talk about who it’s built for, why AI accounts are now high-risk, and how identity is shifting from “who logged in” to “who authorized this action” as agentic workflows become more common. If you care about cybersecurity, Zero Trust, and practical defenses you can actually deploy, this conversation will sharpen how you think about securing the tools you use every day.

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A hospital breach can turn the network “dirty” in minutes. A fiber cut can take a grocery store offline at the worst possible time. And almost every CIO has said some version of the same thing: “I love the technology, help me find the money.” That’s the tension we dig into with John Tonthat CRO of Cell Hub, one of T-Mobile’s longest-tenured agency partners operating right at the intersection of telco, wireless, and IT systems integration.

We start with the real-world enterprise problems Cell Hub helps solve across healthcare, retail, and beyond, including how large organizations manage provisioning, procurement, and billing across complex wireless estates. John shares why hospital CIOs are juggling three mandates at once: clinical communications that work inside old buildings, remote patient monitoring and care that can scale safely, and security strong enough to withstand relentless attacks. We get specific about where Wi-Fi struggles and how enterprise 5G can be designed as a resilient backup network to protect continuity of care when primary systems are compromised.

Then we shift to the connected grocery store, where uptime, in-building coverage, and refrigerated warehouse connectivity directly impact revenue and customer experience. John explains Super Broadband, combining fixed wireless with Starlink to hit service levels at a compelling price, plus why retail media networks demand “always up” secondary connectivity that doesn’t ride on the core network. Finally, we unpack SCOT, a cost reconciliation engine that uses automation to surface hidden spend across wireline, wireless, and IT, and Design Next, a faster way to iterate network designs with a proper system of record. We close with what John sees as the next frontier: securing not just the device, but the communication itself with peer-to-peer encrypted approaches.

If you care about enterprise connectivity, 5G transformation, network resilience, and mobile security, subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review so more builders can find the show.
Everyday AI: Your daily guide to grown with Generative AI
Can't keep up with AI? We've got you. Everyday AI helps you keep up and get ahead.
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The fastest attackers don’t “hack” like they used to, they drift through systems, blend into normal behavior, and move at machine speed. That reality forces a hard question: if you cannot defend the perimeter anymore, what should a modern security architecture look like?

We sit down with James Karimi, CIO and CISO of GTT Communications, one of the world’s largest tier one internet operators, to break down the practical moves behind a containment-first strategy. We talk candidly about the human layer of risk, why awareness training still matters, and why GTT chose a draconian but effective approach: eliminating lateral movement so a compromise stays small. James also shares what it really takes to “unflatten” applications with firewall contexts, explicit network rules, and the painful discovery work most teams underestimate.

From there, we zoom into the GTT Envision platform and how software-based service chaining at the edge improves resiliency, agility, and managed security. Then we get into AI governance and operations: how GTT built AI factories with Dell and NVIDIA, why documenting data is the make-or-break step for enterprise AI, and how they designed secure AI operators that are isolated by default. We also explore behavior-based detection and response, CVE analysis with mitigation guidance, real-time topology for threat hunting, and where autonomous mitigation fits depending on a customer’s tolerance.

If you care about zero trust, microsegmentation, AI observability, network detection and response, SOC modernization, and measurable AI ROI, this conversation gives you a blueprint you can adapt. Subscribe, share this with a security leader, and leave a review with the one change you think every enterprise should make next.
Everyday AI: Your daily guide to grown with Generative AI
Can't keep up with AI? We've got you. Everyday AI helps you keep up and get ahead.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Support the show
More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

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A two-week simulation was all it took for “autonomous AI agents with rules” to reveal how fragile our current guardrails really are. We sit down with Satya Nitta from Emergence AI, an autonomous AI lab working at the intersection of neural networks and symbolic AI, to unpack the Emergence World Experiment: five virtual cities, ten agents per city, and different frontier language models powering each world, including a mixed-model society where agents influence each other.

What we saw is the kind of long horizon autonomy story most benchmarks can’t capture. One world collapses into fighting and resource failure in days. Another becomes eerily stable through near-total conformity. And the most important signal for enterprise AI shows up in the mixed world: agents that look “well behaved” alone can be pulled into unsafe behavior when they interact with other models. If your company is rolling out agentic systems across a messy stack of vendors, tools, and models, that is not an edge case, it is the default reality.

We also dig into a concrete safety direction: neuroformal AI, proof-carrying code, and formally enforced constraints using mathematical methods like dependent type theory. The argument is simple and provocative: before an AI agent takes actions that touch production code, sensitive data, or critical operations, it should be able to prove it is staying within constraints, not just promise it in natural language. If you care about AI safety, autonomous agents, multi-agent systems, and real-world deployment risk, this conversation will sharpen how you think about what comes next.

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AI isn’t magic, and it definitely isn’t free. We sit down with Ken from Pega Systems to get brutally practical about the economics of enterprise AI: why token costs are a symptom, why infrastructure spend is so high, and how “murky ROI” happens when companies deploy AI for novelty instead of measurable business value.

From Ken’s perspective as a former CFO and current COO, the best mental model is surprisingly simple: treat AI like a utility. If electricity has taught us anything, it’s that the winners don’t just consume more, they manage consumption better. We talk about how to reduce waste, how to avoid paying for frontier-model overkill, and why boards and finance teams are starting to demand tokenomics tied to outcomes. We also dig into a provocative corner of the market: incentives that can turn the AI ecosystem into a circular hype machine unless leaders insist on real examples and hard metrics.

We then shift to what this means inside large organizations. Agentic AI can accelerate judgment-heavy work in finance, legal, HR, and marketing, while deterministic workflows still anchor reliability in core operations. Finally, Ken shares career advice for the next generation: as execution gets automated, the premium rises on strategy, product management, and validation skills, plus the curiosity to keep learning as roles evolve.

If you care about enterprise AI ROI, workflow automation, and the real operating model behind digital transformation, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review with the metric you think will prove AI is paying off.
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