As a pilot who’s also guilty of creating monster security checklists, I finally realized the perfect example was right under my nose at 10,000 feet. Turns out aviation has been solving the ‘comprehensive vs. actually useful’ checklist problem for decades—and we can steal their homework.

Strategy isn’t exclusive to executives - it happens at every organizational level, from individual contributors gathering operational insights to senior leaders making departmental decisions.

The convergence of economic downturn, AI adoption, and demographic shifts has created an unprecedented challenge for new graduates entering the job market. Companies using AI to boost productivity of existing workers rather than create new opportunities are inadvertently creating a generational career gap with long-term consequences.

AI governance challenges aren’t fundamentally new - they’re extensions of existing IT security problems like shadow IT, data inventory gaps, and data loss. Organizations with mature security programs already have the building blocks needed to govern AI, though some AI-specific challenges require additional consideration.

After initially viewing AI as just another hype cycle driven by market pressures, I became a daily user when Claude Code allowed me to harness AI’s power within my existing development workflow.

I was invited to speak at the innagural AuthCon, the first Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) conference. During my presentation, I shared real-world insights from my company’s journey to SaaS. I outlined how customer identity and access management needs evolved across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud-native environments, and why building or buying the right identity features is critical for security, scalability, and customer satisfaction.

After attending multiple security conferences this year, BlueHat 2024 stood out for all the right reasons: no vendors, no sales pitches, just pure technical content. The dual perspectives from security researchers and Microsoft’s Security Response Center revealed that every security team faces the same fundamental challenges, just at different scales.