Cybersecurity is rarely a straight line. In this special Black Hat edition of Humans of Talos, Amy looks back at the incredible journeys that brought past guests to the world of threat intelligence. From forensic labs and newsrooms to the kitchen line, we’re revisiting the stories and lessons that define the people behind the threat intelligence.

Heading to Black Hat? We have a presence within the Cisco and Splunk booth (2633) during Black Hat where you can chat to us about our latest threat research and incident response, and grab the newest Snorty. Check out our schedule here.

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Ever wonder how someone goes from studying human viruses to leading cybersecurity teams? In this Humans of Talos, we’re joined by Martin Lee, EMEA Lead, to talk about his journey into the industry. Martin takes us back to the early days of the internet, explaining how he made the leap from academia to the front lines of threat research. He also gives us a fascinating look at his current work, where he’s applying a sociological lens to cybersecurity to better understand what makes certain organizations more resilient than others.

Whether you’re just starting your career in security or looking for a fresh perspective, you won't want to miss Martin’s advice on staying visible, being curious, and "flavoring your life with many spices."

Amy Ciminnisi: Martin, welcome! Can you describe what you do here at Talos for people who might not know you?

Martin Lee: My job is really ambassadorial. I still research the threat landscape, although I spend less time doing that now. Certainly understanding what are the changes that are happening in the threat landscape. But mostly my job is to externalize that — both to write about the threat landscape, but also discuss what we're seeing, what's important, and what's different with our customers and partners.

AC: I had no idea that you started your career in researching the genetics of human viruses. That’s one hell of a career change. Can you tell us about how you ended up where you are today?

ML: Yeah, "I discovered the internet," is basically the short answer. I discovered the internet very, very early on and just thought this is going to be the biggest invention in my life. I thought if I didn't jump there and then because I could see it was going to explode and go everywhere, and if I didn't jump then, I wouldn't be able to keep up with it. So, I left behind a career in academia to jump on board in the early internet and start building it and building websites.

AC: I actually wrote about this in my most recent newsletter — I'm one of the younger members of Talos, so I was born well after all of this started. It is so fascinating to me to hear about people who were out of college when the internet really started booming.

ML: Yeah, it was growing massively through the mid to late 90s, which was awesome. And then there was the .com crash, which was pretty rubbish. So, I found myself with a young family and less work than I wanted. This job came up, writing spam filters. This was before spam filters and certainly before spam was a big problem. So I thought, "Okay, that sounds fun, let's do that." And then we started detecting all of these weird and wonderful attacks. What we didn't know is we were detecting the first APT attacks. In trying to work out what was happening and what we were seeing, that kind of launched the career. So here we are over 23 years later, and cybersecurity has just grown massively. But it was entirely by accident that I ended up here.

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In the high-speed world of cybersecurity, the difference between a breach and a breakthrough often comes down to endurance. Tony Giandomenico, Senior Director of Product Management with Cisco Talos, joins me to discuss how he balances the intensity of leading major product launches with the grueling discipline of Ironman triathlons.

Beyond the technical specs and new threat hunting features, this conversation dives deep into the human side of leadership. Tony shares his hard-won lessons on the power of communication, the importance of knowing your "why," and how to navigate the complexities of a 30-year career without losing your focus.

Amy Ciminnisi: You have been in the thick of the cyber security world for a while now, and a lot of things have shifted in this field. So what has been the biggest surprise for you, and what keeps you excited about leading the charge on the product side?

Tony Giandomenico: Well, I would probably say that the biggest shift over the last six months has been the increase rate of the capabilities of these frontier models. I'm the first one not to jump on the bandwagon of this stuff, because I've been doing this for about 30 plus years or so, but I think this feels a little different. The capabilities are increasing, and I think what that means to cybersecurity is a big shift. How do we deal with all that? From the adversary side, they're actually breaking in the networks like they typically do. They're moving laterally within the environment. They're evading different types of security controls. Finding vulnerabilities, exploiting those vulnerabilities, all of that stuff.

It's also going to be supercharged on the defensive side. Of course, you don't bring a knife to a gun fight, right? You're going to use the same AI technology — you know, the same frontier models — to speed things up there as well. From the product management side, I think we're going to see the things that we would have previously seen five years down the road a lot sooner. And that's kind of that's what kind of excites me about everything — that opportunity to explore the art of possibility is a lot more at your fingertips where it wasn't necessarily before.

AC: We specifically lined this episode up with the Cisco Talos Threat Hunting launch, which you played a major role in. For people who aren't familiar, can you explain what it is?

TG: Threat hunting is where we're looking for different types of threats that are circumventing our existing security control alerts, detection mechanisms, and so on. When defenders invest in these different types of technologies that are automatically detecting alerts or threats in your environment, the challenge that they have is the sensitivity meter. If they set it to be too high, the team might get inundated with false positives, and then that particular product isn't really worth that investment because you're constantly have to investigate those. So the sensitivity meter has to find some place in the middle. That's where it gives these stealthy threat actors a place to live. So you have a combination of AI and human-in-the-loop services, where we build hypotheses to identify actors that may have actually already circumvented your security controls.

Currently, we're hunting in the endpoint telemetry side (e.g., Secure Endpoint) that we offer our customers today. With this expansion, we're expanding it out to our flagship firewall product. So we'll be hunting within Secure Firewall as well as identity, which actually includes Duo and CII, which is Cisco Identity Intelligence.

AC: How do you keep your cool and stay focused on the why behind the work when you're dealing with the intensity of a major launch?

TG: Before coming to Cisco, I had a small cybersecurity consulting company for about 10 years or so out in the Hawaiian Islands. I had the domain expertise, but I had to learn financial aspects, sales, and marketing. I also had to understand what makes people tick. I wasn't able to talk to every individual the same way to get them on board with things. So the biggest thing that I took away when I went from running my business to working in a larger organization was that when folks are in different departments, there are competing priorities and I have to influence them. I have to get them to understand and believe in the vision. So if you go in there with that mindset, knowing that it's not going to flow exactly how you envisioned, things just work out.

Want to see more? Watch the full interview, and don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for future episodes of Humans of Talos.

In the latest Humans of Talos, Amy sits down with Senior Vulnerability Researcher Philippe Laulheret to demystify the world of ethical hacking. Philippe shares his unique journey from French engineering school to the front lines of cybersecurity, explaining how his lifelong love for solving puzzles helps him uncover critical security flaws before they can be exploited.

From his memorable experiment using a green onion to bypass a biometric fingerprint reader to his perspective on the reality of cybersecurity versus what we see in the movies, Philippe provides a fascinating look at the work that keeps our digital world safe.

Amy Ciminnisi: So, can you talk to me a little bit about what you do in vulnerability research?

Philippe Laulheret: I work in vulnerability research. Basically, my job is to find vulnerabilities in software, hardware, or things physically. It’s an interesting position because I usually get to choose which target I want to look at, which confuses people usually, because usually it’s a consulting role, or someone asks you to do that. But for us, we find vulnerabilities in things that we think are important. And then this way, people in different teams can write detection rules, and our customers are protected.

AC: I love that you get to kind of pick a niche and explore. How did you get into this?

PL: My deepest interest was more in reverse engineering, which is understanding how things work, software in particular. Throughout my whole life, I was really curious and really wanted to understand stuff. I guess research is an extension of that where you need to understand how the system works, and then it’s a puzzle where you need to find a way to break it. In my teenage years, I was really interested in that. I started playing Capture The Flag, which are challenges where people design exercises where there is a bug to find and exploit. It was really fun. I was doing that to stay sharp with my skills, and eventually, I was able to transition from regular development work to actual research. All those years of playing CTF really helped, even if it wasn't professional.

AC: Did you go to school initially for development work? What kind of career path led you here?

PL: Originally, as you can hear, I have a French accent. In France, we have engineering schools, which are fancy grad schools. The process is first you study very hard in math and physics, and then you go to grad school. At that time, I was convinced I wanted to do security, and I joined an electrical and computer engineering school. Somehow, in that school, I discovered an interest for different aspects of software development. I was getting interested in computer vision and other things. When I moved to the U.S. for development work instead of security work, I worked in a design studio for four years, which was really fun. I was making interactive installations. But as I said, I was playing CTF on the side to keep security pretty high in my head. Eventually, I moved to New York and joined a cybersecurity startup, and finally, I moved back to the Pacific Northwest, where I’m currently living, and I was finally able to do vulnerability research the way I wanted to.

Want to see more? Watch the full interview, and don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for future episodes of Humans of Talos.