The Security Podcast of Silicon Valley

What if your first lines of code determined your startup’s ability to scale? Dirk Meister, founding engineer at Augment Code, walks us through the intentional security architecture decisions they made on day one—and why trust isn't something you can bolt on later.

Dirk Meister: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meisterdirk/

Augment Code: https://www.augmentcode.com/

Jon McLachlan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-mclachlan/

Sasha Sinkevic...

Michael Nov, Co-Founder and CEO of Prime Security, reveals how ignoring the design stage creates costly security gaps later. He shares hard-won lessons from building at OwnBackup and launching a startup during crisis.

Michael: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-nov Prime Security: https://www.primesec.ai Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-mclachlan   Sasha: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliaksandr-sinkevich   YSecurity: https://ww...

Contracts aren’t controls. Jonathan Mortensen, CEO of Confident Security, lays out a practical path to provably private AI—confidential compute, attestation, and encrypted weights—so you can swap your OpenAI-compatible endpoint, keep crown-jewel data out of vendor training, and still close enterprise deals. Listen to learn how founders can pass security reviews, avoid GPU sprawl, and turn privacy into a sales advantage.

Jonathan: h...

AI isn’t just writing code—it’s joining the team. Scott Dietzen, Board Member at Augment Code, explains how Augment’s AI agents are changing the way enterprise software is built, secured, and scaled. These aren’t copilots for toy projects—they’re context-aware agents designed for real-world codebases and real production work.

Scott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottdietzen Augment Code: https://www.augmentcode.com Jon: https://www...

AI agents can do more than access your data—they can act. TraceForce.ai founders Xia Hua and Glenn Mulvaney reveal the next big security risk: autonomous agents that operate beyond permission boundaries. From startup execution to securing the agent economy, this special episode covers it all.

Xia: www.linkedin.com/in/xia-hua-ph-d Glenn: www.linkedin.com/in/glennanthonymulvaney TraceForce: www.traceforce.ai Jon: www.linkedin.com/i...

Your data is moving—through APIs, AI agents, and services—and most businesses have no idea how. Abhi Sharma, CEO and Co-Founder of Relyance AI, joins us to explain how companies are getting AI governance wrong and what to fix. He reveals the 3 elements that define trust in AI—and why missing just one breaks everything.

Abhi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhisharmab/ Relyance AI: https://www.relyance.ai Jon: www.linkedin.com/in/jon-...

What if security wasn’t something developers had to think about at all? That’s the vision Travis McPeak—former Netflix and Databricks security leader—is building at Resourcely. In this episode, he breaks down why most security tools fail, how trust between security and engineering got broken, and what it really takes to fix cloud misconfigurations before they hit production. Travis also shares what compliance is getting wrong, why ...

What if your security tools are actually slowing you down? Bright Security co-founder and CEO Gadi Bashvitz shares how their team went from AI fuzzing to reshaping the way developers tackle vulnerabilities—without drowning in false positives or compliance theater.

• Why AppSec hasn’t kept up with how engineering works today

• The 60x cost of fixing bugs in production

• What dev-first security actually looks like in the real wor...

AI is no longer just writing code or generating images—it’s shaping how we think.

In this episode, we sit down with AI researcher, professor, and investor Michal Pechoucek to explore how artificial intelligence is shifting from targeting systems to targeting human cognition. Michal outlines four emerging threats that are redefining AI security and explains why deepfakes, behavioral data, and black-box models are putting trust itsel...

Everyone’s building AI. Few know how to deploy it safely. Yaron Singer, co-founder of Robust Intelligence (acquired by Cisco), reveals what’s really blocking AI from scaling—and why trust, not tech, is the biggest barrier. A must-listen for any founder navigating the AI wave. Yaron Singer: www.linkedin.com/in/yaron-singer-76ab6317 Robust Intelligence: www.robustintelligence.com Jon McLachlan: www.linkedin.com/in/jon-mclachlan Sash...

Too many startups fall into the “more tools = more security” trap. Instead of better protection, they end up with data silos, integration nightmares, and security teams buried in alerts—while real threats slip through the cracks.

Kabir Mathur, CEO of Lean, breaks down why adding more security tools might be your biggest mistake, the hidden costs of tool sprawl, and how to actually build a security stack that works.

Kabir Mathur: ww...

Imagine waking up to thousands of customers scammed—using your brand’s name. The website looked real. The emails were flawless. No one saw it coming. This is the new reality of AI-powered fraud. Cybercriminals don’t need weeks to set up a scam anymore—they need just 4 hours.

Rod Schultz, CEO of Bolster AI, exposes the rise of automated phishing, brand impersonation, and large-scale fraud, plus the strategies businesses need to stop...