Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

In this episode of Security Matters, host David Puner welcomes back David Higgins, senior director in CyberArk’s Field Technology Office, for a timely conversation about the evolving cyber threat landscape. Higgins explains why today’s attackers aren’t breaking in—they’re logging in—using stolen credentials, AI-powered social engineering, and deepfakes to bypass traditional defenses and exploit trust.

AI assistants with broad enterprise access are creating a new attack vector. Chris Luft and Matt Bromiley discuss the Gemini Jack vulnerability, where attackers used prompt injection to turn Google's AI assistant into an unwitting accomplice in data exfiltration. The attack embedded hidden instructions in documents or emails. When employees asked Gemini normal questions like "show me our budgets," the AI retrieved the poisoned document and executed the attacker's commands without anyone clicking anything.

Detection is information; Blocking is mitigation. For Business Logic Abuse, simple detection alerts are not enough. Your tools must be able to actively block those manipulative, stateful attacks in real-time. Furthermore: Stop "one-and-done" security testing! You must continuously tune your testing by adopting an adversary's perspective. Tune your defense as constantly as attackers tune their exploits.

Garrett Hamilton sat down with Todd Graham, Managing Partner at Microsoft’s venture fund, M12, to talk about why M12 invested in Reach and why our mission was a no-brainer for him. Nation-state attacks make the headlines—but most people are getting owned by misconfigured servers, networks, and controls hiding in plain sight. Turns out the problem isn’t what teams don’t own. It’s what they do own that isn’t, in most cases, even turned on.

At UC Irvine’s Digital Leadership Agenda 2026, moderated by Nicole Perlroth, Garrett Hamilton illustrates what those blind spots can look like: “We believed it was deployed.”“It was turned on.”“It should have stopped this.” Except one exception, one policy gap, one control not applied at scale — and assumptions replace reality. The real problem isn’t visibility. It’s continuously validating intent against execution.