Future of Data Security

McGill University manages 460,000 digital identities across 250 buildings and runs hospital network traffic through its firewalls. Rolland Winters left 16 years in the Canadian Armed Forces to become Director of Cybersecurity at McGill, where he discovered what he calls "the hardest job in the world."
Rolland breaks down the reality of securing one of the most decentralized environments in higher education, from researchers with their own budgets and cloud platforms to 170 to 180 AI destinations hitting the firewall and a student lifecycle that generates constant identity churn.

Topics Discussed:
- Securing 460,000 identities in higher education
- Research data risks in dual-use AI and defense
- AI adoption across campus and the education gap
- Student identity lifecycle challenges
- Supply chain risk in decentralized universities
- Threat sharing between Canadian universities
- Digital sovereignty and Canada's AI investment
- Leadership and team building through hackathons

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When agentic AI systems make multiple tool calls, store data, and act autonomously, static compliance frameworks fall apart. Kevin Bauer, CISO at Chainalysis Government Solutions, argues security teams need continuous monitoring of which controls were in effect at runtime and whether those controls actually worked.
Kevin led the first blockchain analytics product to FedRAMP Moderate authorization, where data sensitivity emerged through attribution to real-world entities. He draws direct parallels between those boundary-setting challenges and today's governance gaps in agentic AI, where data classification must drive compliance obligations in real time.

Topics discussed:
Leading blockchain analytics through FedRAMP Moderate authorization

Why blockchain data sensitivity emerges through attribution

Agentic AI breaks static compliance frameworks

Continuous runtime monitoring of AI agent controls

AI governance platforms lack the infrastructure layer

Shifting from audit mode to enforcement at runtime

Hiring for curiosity over mature governance experience

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The gap between an exploit's first use and its public disclosure has gone negative. Agentically deployed attacks now reach their target before the vulnerability behind them is ever publicly reported, a shift most security programs are still catching up to.
Tom Doughty, Chief Information Security Officer at Generate:Biomedicines, walks Jean through what that shift demands from a security team, from agentic countermeasures to a different approach to non-human identity, plus what changed when he moved a 25-year financial services security career into an AI-native biotech (generatebiomedicines.com) built on machine-generated molecules.

Topics discussed:
Agentic exploits outpacing public vulnerability disclosure

Redefining crown jewels beyond financial services norms

Governing non-human identity and agent access

Third party and supply chain risk in agentic workflows

Frontier model providers walking back zero data retention

Stratifying compute spend across model tiers

Differentiating vendors beyond the AI interface layer

Hiring for inventiveness and objective-driven thinking

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Gopuff runs 200-plus AI agents and 100-plus MCP servers across three public clouds, and Ravi Nori is the one securing all of it. The Head of Cyber Security at Gopuff brought a defense-industry classification ethos to a cloud-native retail platform where customer data sits at the top of the priority chain.
Ravi walks Jean through Gopuff's three AI deployments, the shadow AI sprawl he uncovered during an environment scan, and why agent security now spans three surfaces: desktop, browser, and cloud. He also breaks down how boards push for AI adoption while security lags behind.

Topics discussed:
Applying defense data classification to retail customer data
Deploying AI agents as customer service chatbots at scale
Building an AI-powered natural language search feature for mobile
Discovering shadow AI tool sprawl across employee endpoints
Securing agents across desktop, browser, and cloud surfaces
Managing AI token economics and cost spikes through access controls
Addressing board pressure for AI adoption while security lags
Translating security risk into business language for non-technical audiences

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What if the file itself decided who gets access, carried its own encryption, and refused unauthorized requests? Georgeo X. Pulikkathara, Global CIO and CISO at iMerit Technology, sees that future arriving fast.
With 34 years in IT security and active service as a Colonel in the US Army Reserve, Georgeo breaks down 40-minute AI-enabled breaches, the flood of non-human accounts, and why human oversight remains the one control that will never go away.

Topics discussed:
34 years in IT security and Army Reserve service
iMerit Technology's AI data solutions
AI-enabled attacks and the 40-minute breach
Non-human accounts flooding enterprise networks
Human-in-the-loop oversight for AI systems
Self-protecting data with built-in encryption
Quantum-resistant encryption and post-quantum security
Competency, character, and commitment in security teams

Get in touch with your host, Jean Le Bouthillier: 
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