CrowdStrike: Preparing for an AI-Powered Future with Amazon CSO Steve Schmidt

Steve Schmidt, SVP and CSO at Amazon, sees firsthand how both defenders and adversaries are using AI to their advantage. In this episode, he joins Adam and Cristian to discuss modern AI models, evolving adversary behavior, and how Amazon is responding to shifts in the threat landscape.

“The big change we’ve seen recently is the ability of models to chain things together to produce something interesting,” Steve says. As AI models grow more adept at automatically chaining and acting, he adds, the time to respond has dramatically decreased.

Defenders must now measure and respond in seconds or minutes, when they used to have hours or days. In using AI to fight AI-driven attacks, they must also consider which AI models they’re using. Using the right model is essential. If the business is building defenses for Mythos or Fable, and the adversary is using a different technology, the threat model changes.

While adversarial use of AI is a primary concern, right alongside it is employees’ use of AI. As Steve puts it, to build a good AI governance program, defenders need strong identity governance and data governance programs. The identity component is key. Many organizations over-permission agents; others are so restrictive they defeat the purpose of having agents at all.

How did Amazon handle this? Steve shares how the company built its own authentication framework that treats agents as a third type of identity. The agent temporarily inherits permissions through session-based delegation from the human who deployed it; it can only access what that person can access. It can’t do what they can’t do, even if a malicious prompt tries to trick it.

Tune in to hear more details about AI-driven defense, and the evolution of AI-powered offense, in this episode of the Adversary Universe podcast.

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