Join Palo Alto Networks leaders for an executive briefing on how Frontier Al is accelerating cyber risk, what Unit 42® is seeing from real-world incidents and customer assessments, and how CISOs should respond.
Sam Rubin, SVP of Unit 42, and Marc Benoit, CISO of Palo Alto Networks, will share lessons from putting Frontier AI defense into practice inside our own environment and with customers. They’ll examine how AI is compressing attack timelines, what we’ve learned from using frontier models to uncover and validate exposure, and how those findings are changing the way we think about defense.
This briefing will outline Palo Alto Networks defensive operating model for the Frontier AI era, including:
- Continuous validation: How to identify what is changing across the enterprise and validate which exposures attackers can actually exploit.
- Faster risk reduction: How prioritized remediation and innovations like virtual patching can help teams move faster from exposure to protection.
- CISO-ready guidance: What security leaders should do now to reduce risk, focus teams and prepare for AI-speed attacks.
Prior to joining Unit 42, Steve was the Vice President of Mandiant Consulting (Google Cloud) and was one of the company’s leading incident response experts. In his role, Steve built an international team that provided expert consulting services to Fortune 500 corporations and government agencies. He oversaw nation-state cybersecurity investigations, proactive security assessments, and Scaled/Agile transformations and implementations. He and his team helped thousands of organizations respond to security breaches orchestrated by organized criminals and ransomware groups, foreign governments, and hacktivists. Steve also created a global victim notification and external threat intelligence outreach program preventing countless intrusions internationally.
Prior to his time at Mandiant, Steve worked as a lead technologist at Booz Allen Hamilton and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Education
- Wharton Chief Technology Officer Program—Executive Education, University of Pennsylvania
- Corporate Governance: Maximize Your Effectiveness in the Boardroom
- Executive Presence and Influence: Persuasive Leadership Development
- Product Management and Strategy
- Bachelor of Science, information science and technology, Pennsylvania State University
Certifications
- Global Information Assurance Certification (“GIAC”) Strategic Planning, Policy, and Leadership (“GSTRT”)
- Federal Bureau of Investigation Citizen Academy Graduate
- Payment Card Industry (“PCI”) Qualified Security Assessor (“QSA”)/PCI Forensic Investigator (“PFI”)
- GIAC Certified Forensic Examiner (“GCFE”)
- GIAC Certified Penetration Tester (“GPEN”)
- International Information System Security Certification Consortium (“ISC2”) Certified Information Systems Security Professional (“CISSP”)
- Certified Ethical Hacker
- EnCase Certified Forensic Examiner
- National Security Agency - NSTISSI-4011 Information Security Systems Professional
- CompTIA IT Project +
