When AI Touches Everything: Operationalizing the Five Most Dangerous New Attack Techniques at RSAC 2026 | A Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast Conversation with Ed Skoudis, President of SANS Technology Institute and Founder & CEO of Counter Hack

Show Notes

For ten years, Ed Skoudis has curated one of the most anticipated sessions at RSA Conference: SANS' "Five Most Dangerous New Attack Techniques: Crucial Tips for Defenders." The session has always been a hit -- standing room only on the main stage -- but this year, Ed says something has changed. Not one or two topics with an AI component. All five.

Ed is deliberate about how the session comes together. He starts with people, not topics. He builds the panel around SANS instructors who bring front-line insight, and he starts the process six months out. This year's panel features returning panelist Heather Mahalik, Rob Teeley back for his second year, Joshua Wright in his second year -- this time carrying two topics and eight minutes instead of six -- and, making his first appearance on this stage, Robert M. Lee of Dragos, one of the world's foremost voices on ICS and OT security.

The addition of "Crucial Tips for Defenders" to the title this year was intentional. Ed pushed every panelist to move beyond naming threats and toward prescribing action -- practical, implementable steps that a CISO can hand down and a practitioner can execute the next morning. For topics where prevention is impossible, the mandate shifted to detection and response. SANS publishes session notes to their website within minutes of the talk ending.

The backdrop this year is a warning Ed calls unlike anything in his 30 years of attending RSA and DEF CON. At a recent AI cybersecurity conference in San Francisco, presenters from Google and Anthropic outlined what Google termed the "vuln apocalypse" -- an imminent surge in AI-discovered zero-day vulnerabilities at a scale and pace that patching pipelines are not designed to handle. Ed's own team at Counter Hack has already experienced this firsthand: a frontier AI model identified a critical zero-day in a widely used open source project in a matter of hours. The Anthropic presenter's claim was blunt: within months, AI will surpass all human vulnerability researchers combined.

All of this lands at the center of what the RSAC session is designed to address -- not as a theoretical exercise, but as a set of actions defenders can take right now. The session runs Tuesday, March 24th at 3:55 PM on the main stage, with an interactive follow-on session Wednesday morning where attendees can go deeper with individual panelists. For anyone who wants to understand where the threat landscape is actually heading and what to do about it, Ed says this is the year you cannot afford to miss it.

Guest

Ed Skoudis, President, SANS Technology Institute; Founder & CEO, Counter Hack | On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edskoudis

Host

Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine, Studio C60, and Host of Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast & Music Evolves Podcast | Website: https://www.seanmartin.com/

Resources

SANS Institute | https://www.sans.org

RSA Conference 2026 is taking place April 28 - May 1, 2026 | Moscone Center, San Francisco -- Follow our coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/rsac-2026-conference-san-francisco-usa-cybersecurity-event-infosec-conference-coverage

The Future of Cybersecurity Newsletter | https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7108625890296614912/

More Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast episodes | https://www.seanmartin.com/redefining-cybersecurity-podcast

Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast on YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnYu0psdcllS9aVGdiakVss9u7xgYDKYq

Keywords

ed skoudis, sean martin, sans institute, sans technology institute, counter hack, rsac 2026, rsa conference, five most dangerous attack techniques, ai in cybersecurity, vulnerability research, zero-day vulnerabilities, patch management, penetration testing, defender tips, ics security, ai-powered attacks, redefining cybersecurity, cybersecurity podcast, redefining cybersecurity podcast

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