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- An Identity Crisis: How AI Agents Are Redefining Enterprise Security | with Rishi Bhargava
An Identity Crisis: How AI Agents Are Redefining Enterprise Security | with Rishi Bhargava
The cybersecurity landscape just shifted permanently, and most organizations aren't ready. While CISOs struggle with alert fatigue from 40+ security tools, a new threat vector is emerging that makes traditional identity management obsolete: AI agents acting autonomously across enterprise systems.
Join SecureTalk host Justin Beals for a critical conversation with Rishi Bhargava, the security architect who built Demisto into a $560M category-defining platform and now leads Descope in solving the next impossible challenge. This episode delivers actionable insights for everyone—from Fortune 500 CISOs managing complex threat landscapes to business leaders evaluating AI adoption risks.
For Security Professionals, you'll discover: • How AI agent proliferation creates an "identity explosion" that traditional IAM can't handle • Why probabilistic AI systems require fundamentally different access controls than deterministic human users • Advanced WebAuthn and FIDO2 implementation strategies for zero-trust architectures • SOC2 compliance frameworks adapted for AI-human hybrid workflows • Real-world SOAR evolution lessons from the Demisto acquisition
For Business Leaders, you'll learn:
• Why passwordless authentication directly impacts customer acquisition and retention
• The hidden costs of password-related support tickets and user drop-offs
• How early AI identity management adoption creates competitive advantages
• Risk assessment frameworks for AI agent deployment in sensitive environments
For Everyone:
• Why your current passwords are a ticking time bomb in an AI-first world
• How biometric authentication actually works (and why it's more secure than you think)
• Practical steps to future-proof your digital security today
Whether you're architecting enterprise security for thousands of employees or simply trying to understand why your login experience keeps getting more complex, this episode reveals the forces reshaping digital identity. The organizations that master AI agent authentication will lead their industries—those that don't risk catastrophic breaches and customer exodus.
#CISO #AIAuthentication #EnterpriseIdentity #ZeroTrust #PasswordlessSecurity #CyberSecurityStrategy #IAM #BiometricAuth #SecurityCompliance #AIAgents
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About our guest
Rishi Bhargava is a co-founder at Descope, a drag & drop external IAM platform. In a career spanning over 20 years, Rishi has run product, strategy, go-to-market, and engineering for category-creating cybersecurity startups and large enterprises. Before Descope, Rishi served as VP of Product Strategy at Palo Alto Networks which he joined via the acquisition of Demisto. Rishi was a co-founder at Demisto where, under his stewardship, the company created and later led a new “security orchestration” category within 3 years before being acquired. Prior to Demisto, Rishi was VP and GM of the Datacenter Group at Intel Security and launched multiple products at McAfee (acquired by Intel).
Rishi is passionate about technology and serves as an active investor and advisor to multiple startups in Silicon Valley and India, some of which have already seen successful exits.
Justin Beals is a serial entrepreneur with expertise in AI, cybersecurity, and governance who is passionate about making arcane cybersecurity standards plain and simple to achieve. He founded Strike Graph in 2020 to eliminate confusion surrounding cybersecurity audit and certification processes by offering an innovative, right-sized solution at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional methods.
Now, as Strike Graph CEO, Justin drives strategic innovation within the company. Based in Seattle, he previously served as the CTO of NextStep and Koru, which won the 2018 Most Impactful Startup award from Wharton People Analytics.
Justin is a board member for the Ada Developers Academy, VALID8 Financial, and Edify Software Consulting. He is the creator of the patented Training, Tracking & Placement System and the author of “Aligning curriculum and evidencing learning effectiveness using semantic mapping of learning assets,” which was published in the International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJet). Justin earned a BA from Fort Lewis College.
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