
Show Notes
In the very first episode of The Future of Data Security podcast, our host, Co-Founder and CEO of Qohash, Jean Le Bouthillier, speaks with Pilar Garcia, Director of Privacy and Security at Help Scout. Pilar shares her journey into data privacy and security, emphasizing the significance of a people-centric approach to building robust security teams.
She discusses the delicate balance between innovation and risk, highlighting the importance of effective communication within organizations. Pilar also touches on the evolving challenges posed by AI in the security landscape, particularly with phishing.
Topics discussed:
Transitioning from a background in physics to a career in data privacy and security.
The importance of empowering teams with the knowledge and tools needed to foster a proactive data privacy and security culture.
How effective communication within a company is crucial for balancing innovation with the risks associated with data security.
The future challenges posed by AI, particularly in the context of phishing and other security threats.
How to build a strong data privacy and security team that can adapt to ever-changing tech landscapes.
How proper security training is essential, moving beyond just checking a box to truly educating employees on best practices.
The need to communicate technical risks in a way that business teams can easily understand.
The pitfalls of implementing security measures that look good on paper but are not effective in practice.
The value of mentorship and shares personal experiences with mentors who have guided her in the field.
More from Future of Data Security
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.
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.
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.
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.
Gartner predicts 40% of enterprise applications will incorporate agentic AI by year's end, but Jon Rohrich is asking a more basic question: why? Leading Avanade's Canadian cybersecurity practice with nearly 30 consultants, Jon keeps watching proof of concepts succeed, only to collapse when unmodeled risks surface in production.