Building Defense for the Agentic Era: Kevin Mandia

Kevin Mandia (0:00)

If you don't have a defense on this, you have a great offense to go up against. You want to be the Baltimore Ravens defense of 2000 You kind of want to have your practice offense really push you. That's what Armadin is going to do. We're going to be the all-star team on offense coming at you, so you can train your defense with what we're doing.

David George (0:17)

But you built Mandiant, a great success. Why did you decide to get back on the field?

Kevin Mandia (0:22)

I don't want to sit out the AI shift change when I've done 30 years in security and the whole damn things about the change. What AI does in a microsecond would take 70 humans. They can't even do it. It's apples and oranges.

David George (0:35)

This is a tsunami like has never been seen before in security.

Kevin Mandia (0:38)

The whole, let's slow down the models. We don't want cyber risk, too late. The open models are already good enough. Armadin since January of this year, we have found over 90 zero days at customer sites, all in production.

David George (0:51)

This is not like rinky-dink companies, like these are like Fortune 500 companies. The differences or similarities between nation state attacks compared to AI today and then where you think AI can be in a couple of years.

Kevin Mandia (1:04)

On the defensive side, we're going to say, we're being attacked by these models, but we're not sure who's behind them. Is it a nation? Is it a human? Is it?

SPEAKER_3 (1:11)

Kevin Mandia has spent 30 years in cybersecurity. His view of the AI transition is simple. Everything I did is dead, and then everything else is new.

In this episode, David George sits down with Kevin, founder and CEO of Armadin and the founder of Mandiant, to talk about what happens when cyberattacks move from human speed to machine speed. Kevin explains why AI gives attackers an immediate advantage, from probing thousands of paths simultaneously, to making less sophisticated attackers dramatically more capable. And he makes the case that there's only one viable response. Defense has to become autonomous too.

We also get in to how Armadin uses AI to continuously attack customer networks, what the team has learned from finding more than 90 zero days this year, and why Kevin believes the next two years could remake nearly every layer of the cyber security stack.

David George (2:07)

Kevin, thanks for being here.

Kevin Mandia (2:08)

No, thank you.

David George (2:09)

Okay, so you built Mandiant.

Kevin Mandia (2:10)

Yes.

David George (2:11)

Obviously a great success, many different chapters, you know, it ended up inside of Google ultimately. Why did you decide to get back on the field?

Kevin Mandia (2:19)

It's a good question, and I don't know if I decided it, and that'll sound weird, but I met with David Slater and with Travis Lanham, the other founders, and Evan Pena I knew.

I could say they started this company, they are the founders. I met them, they had the idea, they pitched me on what they wanted to do, and I saw the talent in them. Travis is a generational talent. David Slater's, and I mean, it's in a positive way, freak of nature. These guys are really, really good. Evan Pena is exceptional at what he does. And when you meet that team and you talk to them, the whole time I was listening to what they were doing, I was thinking, I want to be a part of this. I don't want to sit out the AI shift change when I've done 30 years in security and the whole damn thing's about to change. That's great. Everything I did is dead and everything else is new. But meeting that team and they were starting the company and me realizing, I think I'm a real good fit with these guys to accelerate the need. What Armadin is building every company needs now.

I was like, this team that can build it, and I think I can answer the now. 30 years in security, you meet a few people. Let's go to those people and say, we've built what you need. Yeah. I almost felt compelled to do it. I know that sounds weird, but I would not have founded a company again in mid 50s and I was doing venture. It wasn't like, oh, I'm an entrepreneur and I love starting companies. That's not it. And it wasn't, oh, I'm not a VC. I'm just an operational guy. That's not it. I met the team and went, we have to do this.

SPEAKER_3 (3:55)

Yeah.

Kevin Mandia (3:55)

I mean, that's really it. Yeah.