Skip to content
Sign in
Artwork for AI Security, Cyber Risk, and Cloud Strategy on ClearTech Loop
TechnologyBusinessManagementNewsTech News

AI Security, Cyber Risk, and Cloud Strategy on ClearTech Loop

ClearTech Research / Jo Peterson

Season 2 of ClearTech Loop is built around three questions: 

How is AI changing the way organizations think about risk?

 What does stronger cybersecurity leadership look like right now? 

How should leaders rethink cloud strategy as business and technology keep shifting?


Hosted by Jo Peterson, Chief Analyst at ClearTech Research, ClearTech Loop is a fast, focused podcast covering AI, cybersecurity, and cloud risk through a business leadership lens. 


Each 10-15 minute episode explores the issues shaping modern technology strategy and the decisions leaders cannot afford to ignore.


From governance and resilience to infrastructure change and emerging risk, ClearTech Loop helps leaders make sense of what is shifting, what matters most, and what comes next.

Play
Open in
  • 24 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 15 min
  • English

Episodes 24

NewestOldestLongest
All4Unplayed4In progress0Played0
Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.
  • S2 · E1
    April 7 · 18 min

    AI Security: Matt Sharp on Shadow AI, NHIs, and AI Defense

    What does AI security actually look like inside real organizations? In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson talks with Matt Sharp, Chief Information Security Officer at Xactly, about shadow AI, non human identities, and what leaders should really mean when they talk about AI defense. They unpack why shadow AI is both an IT and security issue, how CISOs and CIOs are approaching identity and governance, and why AI defense now spans productivity tools, SaaS platforms, internal environments, and third party risk. In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson sits down with Matt Sharp for a grounded conversation on three issues reshaping enterprise AI governance: shadow AI, NHIs, and AI defense. Matt brings a practical view from inside a real operating environment, where AI adoption is moving fast and governance, identity, and risk have to keep up. In the conversation, he explains why shadow AI is not just a security problem. It is also an IT, tooling, and governance problem, especially when organizations are trying to steer employees toward approved AI tools while protecting enterprise data. The conversation then shifts to non human identities, where Matt argues that AI agents are being layered into authorization models that organizations never fully solved in the first place. From there, Jo and Matt dig into AI defense as a broader enterprise challenge that now touches browser extensions, IDEs, local models, SaaS platforms, and third party risk. This episode is especially relevant for CIOs, CISOs, security leaders, IT leaders, and enterprise technology teams trying to balance AI adoption with governance, visibility, and accountability. Timestamps 00:00 Introduction to Matt Sharp and the episode theme 02:29 Shadow AI: IT problem, security problem, or both? 05:54 Why collaboration between security and IT matters 07:21 NHIs, authorization, and the limits of role based access control 12:11 What AI defense means in practice 15:33 Platform strategy, budget pressure, and what comes next in AI security Guest Bio Matt Sharp is the Chief Information Security Officer at Xactly. He focuses on security, trust, and AI governance in environments where AI is becoming core to the business and product. He is also a venture advisor at YL Ventures and the author of The CISO Evolution. Additional Resources Matt Sharp: A CISO’s approach to creating AI governance framework: https://www.securitypalhq.com/blog/matt-sharp-a-cisos-approach-to-creating-ai-governance-framework The CISO Evolution by Matt Sharp: http://amazon.com/CISO-Evolution-Knowledge-Cybersecurity-Executives/dp/1119782481 Season 1 ClearTech Loop: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2248577 Follow ClearTech Loop for more conversations on AI security, cybersecurity leadership, AI governance, and enterprise technology strategy. 🎧 Listen: In Buzzsprout Player ▶ Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ClearTechResearch/videos 📰 Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7346174860760416256/

    • Transcript
  • S1 · E41
    March 10 · 11 min

    AI Security Is a Risk Leadership Problem First with Gerry Gadoury

    In this episode of the ClearTech Loop podcast, Jo Peterson sits down with Gerry Gadoury to talk about what AI security leadership actually requires as the threat landscape changes faster and the business pressure around AI keeps rising. This is not a conversation about one more security tool. Gerry brings the discussion back to risk judgment, executive alignment, and the human side of security leadership. As AI lowers the barrier for attackers and accelerates the pace of change, security leaders need to focus on real risk, not theoretical panic, while helping the business make better decisions under pressure. Subscribe to ClearTech Loop on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7346174860760416256/ Key Quotes “Do real risk assessments. Don't look so much for the Boogeyman. Look for the person actually knocking on your door.” “When you mandatorily push it downhill, I think people are going to resist.” “The AI landscape changes fundamentally by quarter.” Three Big Ideas from This Episode Real risk matters more than theoretical panic AI security starts with identifying what is likely, material, and relevant to the business instead of getting lost in every hypothetical scenario. Security cannot just be pushed downhill Runbooks and playbooks matter, but they do not replace executive alignment. Security works better when leaders understand the concerns, reduce resistance, and align around outcomes before a crisis hits. The CISO role is becoming more business critical As AI changes the risk environment, CISOs need to think more like risk officers by balancing technical controls, business priorities, and leadership judgment. Additional resources Destination Employer: Attract, Recruit, and Retain the Top Talent in Your Market by Gerry Gadoury: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CR352P8M/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_MCV88SEER4A2FGQQ6H73 NIST AI Risk Management Framework and AI Resource Center: https://airc.nist.gov/ ClearTech Loop Season 1: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2248577 🎧 Listen: In Buzzsprout Player ▶ Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ClearTechResearch/videos 📰 Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7346174860760416256/

    • Transcript
  • S1 · E40
    March 2 · 20 min

    Cybersecurity Is a Social System with Fernando

    In this episode of the ClearTech Loop podcast, Jo Peterson sits down with Fernando Montenegro to talk about what the CISO role actually looks like right now as generative AI spreads across the enterprise. This is not a conversation about one more security tool. Fernando frames AI as a forcing function that exposes the social structure of an organization, including incentives, accountability, influence, and how decisions get made. The CISO role has become a bridge role, and the job is more political, more collaborative, and more consultative than it used to be. Subscribe to ClearTech Loop on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7346174860760416256/ Zach Lewis Buzzsprout https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7346174860760416256/ Key Quotes “They are the translator of security issues to non security decision makers.” “One of the ways to bring these silos down is to have empathy for the other side, if you will.” “You solve all of this at the design stage, at the initiation stage, not down the line when people want to release the production.” Three Big Ideas from This Episode AI forces cross functional alignment AI makes silos expensive. When teams have to work together to make AI work, security cannot stay isolated and expect trust to show up later. Embed security by showing up early There is no perfect universal checklist. The workable move is being there at the beginning, removing friction early, and helping the initiative flourish before deadlines turn everything into a showdown. The CISO is a translator role now CISOs are playing multiple games at once across the board, the CIO, legal, customers, regulators, and internal teams. Translation is a core operating requirement, not a soft skill. Episode Notes and Links Listen: In the Player Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/0H4x1-Hu-44 Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7346174860760416256/ Additional resources The Futurum Group, Fernando Montenegro profile https://futurumgroup.com/fernando-montenegro/ AI and organizational risk management resources, NIST AI Risk Management Framework https://www.nist.gov/itl/ai-risk-management-framework 2017 Transformers paper: “Attention Is All You Need” (2017) by Ashish Vaswani, Noam Shazeer, Niki Parmar, Jakob Uszkoreit, Llion Jones, Aidan N. Gomez, Łukasz Kaiser, Illia Polosukhin. https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2017/file/3f5ee243547dee91fbd053c1c4a845aa-Paper.pdf ClearTech Research and ClearTech Loop https://cleartechresearch.com/ 🎧 Listen: In Buzzsprout Player ▶ Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ClearTechResearch/videos 📰 Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7346174860760416256/

    • Transcript
  • S1 · E39
    February 26 · 15 min

    Security Is an Environment with Miri Rodriguez

    What CISOs miss when security only lives in features AI security is still getting framed like a technology problem: new tools, new controls, new dashboards, and new rules. In this episode of ClearTech Loop, Jo Peterson talks with Miri Rodriguez, Cofounder and CEO of Empressa.ai, about why that framing keeps breaking in the real world. Miri brings a people first lens to AI adoption and security. She argues that security is not just something you install. It is an environment people are willing to enter. When the environment does not feel secure, adoption either slows or goes underground, and then security teams are left trying to govern what they cannot see. This conversation connects three practical leadership threads: using GenAI upstream to understand real adoption patterns, embedding security and privacy without slowing innovation by designing for humans, and building governance that becomes habit instead of paperwork. Subscribe to ClearTech Loop on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7346174860760416256/ Key Quotes “The opportunity is massive when you think about security as an environment, not just a technology or a feature.” “The features don’t matter. If you can’t tell me why the features are important in my space.” Three Big Ideas from This Episode GenAI beyond the tool stack Generative AI can help security leaders widen the lens on adoption. Before policies and controls, leaders need to understand where people hesitate, where they take shortcuts, and why the secure path gets avoided. Inclusion is a security control Speed without inclusion creates blind spots, and blind spots become risk. Security and privacy do not have to slow innovation, but they do have to be designed in a way people can understand and follow. Governance is behavior If governance does not translate into day to day habits, it is just documentation. Training format matters as much as content, and security sticks when people see it as personal responsibility, not corporate paperwork. Additional Resources AI Foundations for Women (Empressa AI) https://empressa.ai/ai-foundations-for-women/ Most Tools Weren’t Built with Women in Mind, AI Is Just the Latest https://empressa.ai/2025/04/03/most-tools-werent-built-with-women-in-mind-ai-is-just-the-latest/ IABC Catalyst, Building Your Brand With Microsoft Senior Storyteller Miri Rodriguez https://www.iabc.com/Catalyst/Article/building-your-brand-with-microsoft-senior-storyteller-miri-rodriguez About the Guest Miri Rodriguez is Cofounder and CEO at Empressa.ai, an AI and storytelling strategist, bestselling author, and Microsoft alum. She focuses on ethical innovation, inclusion, and building trustworthy AI environments where women can connect, learn, and thrive. She is also the author of Brand Storytelling: Put Customers at the Heart of Your Brand Story. 🎧 Listen: In Buzzsprout Player ▶ Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ClearTechResearch/videos 📰 Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7346174860760416256/

    • Transcript
Showing 21–24 of 24 episodes