Summary
In a recent episode of The Defenders Log, host David Redekop sat down with cyber security expert Rafael Ramirez to navigate the rapidly shifting landscape of AI security. As we move deeper into 2026, the duo explored how artificial intelligence has evolved from simple chatbots into powerful, autonomous “agentic” systems.
The Double-Edged Sword of AI
Ramirez uses a striking analogy: AI is like a knife. While it can be a tool for productivity (spreading butter), in the wrong hands or without oversight, it can be destructive. The critical difference today? This “knife” is starting to make its own decisions, making human-centric governance more vital than ever.
The 7 Pillars of SME Security
For small and medium enterprises (SMEs) looking to scale affordably and safely, Ramirez outlines seven core focus areas:
- Governance: Industry-specific rules for AI use.
- Data Integrity: Controlling who and what accesses your information.
- Hygiene: Consistent MFA and patching.
- Third-Party Risk: Vetting SaaS applications.
- AI Threat Detection: Using AI to fight AI.
- The Three T’s: Technology, Trust, and Talent.
- Incident Response: Preparedness for the inevitable.
The Verdict: People First
Despite the rise of automation, Ramirez insists that Talent remains the most important ingredient. By fostering a “Zero Trust” mindset—never trust, always verify—and prioritizing community service (“Serve before you ask”), organizations can harness AI’s innovation while keeping the “knife” firmly under control.
Full episode of The Defender’s Log here:
Speed, Risk, and Responsibility in the Age of AI | Rafael Ramirez | Defender’s Log
TL;DR
- The Power Shift: Rapid innovation allows a single person using AI agents to compete with 50-person companies, but this speed often outpaces safety policies and laws.
- The 7 Pillars of SME Defense: Success requires a focus on Governance, Data Control, Hygiene (MFA/Patching), Third-Party Risk, AI Threat Detection, People (The 3 T’s: Tech, Trust, Talent), and Incident Response.
- Zero Trust Architecture: Security leaders must adopt a “never trust, always verify” mindset, specifically by using network guardrails to control what AI agents can access both internally and on the open internet.
- The Human Factor: Despite the automation, Talent is the most critical ingredient. The ultimate rule for security professionals is to "serve before you ask.
Links
View it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u0Od3DIpjs
Listen to the episode on your favourite podcast platform:
Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4kF563bAH2g0HIJSxm7Fno
ADAMnetworks
https://adamnet.works
The Defender’s Log Full Transcript -Episode 016
David Redekop: What are the major security concerns in artificial intelligence today?
Rafael Ramirez: When I think about small and medium companies or enterprises, I always think about building things that are practical, affordable, and scale them. We’re still focusing on learning how to manage and stabilize assistance.
David Redekop: I really like how you articulated all of the different pillars that are important to take care of AI security.
Rafael Ramirez: AI is like a knife. A knife can be used to spread your butter, but a knife can also be used to murder. But now imagine that the knife makes its own decisions. It decides whether it wants to spread butter on your bread or murder. And now this knife is not a knife that you can control. It’s available everywhere.
Narrator: Deep in the digital shadows, where threats hide behind any random bite, a fearless crew of cyber security warriors guards the line between chaos and order. Their epic battles rarely spoken of until today. Welcome to the defenders log, where we crack open the secrets of top security chiefs, CISOs, and architects who faced the abyss and won. Here’s your host, David Redekop.
David Redekop: Welcome back to another episode of the Defenders Log and I have a really beautiful smiling Raphael Ramirez with me today. Nice to have you, Rafa. How are you?
Rafael Ramirez: Hi, David. Good morning. Happy to be here. An honor to be here with you.
David Redekop: I am so glad you are too. We met the first time at a ski and snowboard event just north of Toronto. And oddly enough, or maybe not oddly, but harmoniously enough, today is another super cold day here at 22 degrees below zero in Celsius. And it’s crazy how cold things can get even though there are people who live in this kind of temperature all around. How are you doing in this cold?
Rafael Ramirez: I’m very good. Some people know that I am a winter guy, but I know today is tough. We need to wear our gloves.
David Redekop: Well, you and I both come from places that are much warmer. And I don’t know if you get this, but I get a lot of questions. Wait a minute. You came from where? And why did you come to the cold Canada? Did you get the same?
Rafael Ramirez: Yes. Yes. I come from a very hot place in Colombia. It’s interesting that basically I don’t like hot places. I like cold places. So, I am one of a kind. That’s why I am here.
David Redekop: Well, I feel the same. As soon as it’s so cold though, like this, then I’m like, “Okay, I am ready now for a little bit of warmth. There’s like a reasonable amount of cold. That’s pretty good.” And then it gets to be too much. And then you want to get back to warmth. But that’s the beautiful thing about being here is that we get the seasonal changes. By the time we have the really hot and humid summer here, I’m ready for fall and then I’m ready for winter and then I’m ready for spring. So, if we’re an optimist, which I peg you as quite the optimist as well, it is one of those things you’re always looking forward to the next season. You’re kind of enjoying the current one, but the next one is just as exciting, right?
Rafael Ramirez: Yes, it is. And looking forward to skiing in this season. So, fortunate enough in next week, I will be skiing maybe with you.
David Redekop: That’s right. I’m going to be there again for this year’s. So I’m very excited about this. By the time this is published, I think that’s the day that you and I will be on the hill. So anybody who’s listening or watching, you can just imagine Rafa and I are enjoying snowboarding and skiing up at Horseshoe Valley. And it’s not like the Rockies, but it’s pretty decent as far as skiing and snowboarding in Ontario, Canada goes, that’s for sure. Raphael, I’m glad that you’re able to join me for a little bit on the podcast here to talk about defense in cyber security, especially as it relates to the wonderful world of AI. But before we do that, tell us a little bit about where you got your start. Did you already get your start in technology before you left Colombia?
Rafael Ramirez: I always say that I was born an engineer and since I was eight years old I was doing all kind of stuff with coding computers—the initial ones: 286, 386, the first Pentium ones. So my start was with coding and then I became an electrical engineer because I was running away from coding. I said I’m going to go into hardware. But then I basically you know how everything changed. Everything becomes about code. I study electronical engineer. I was a network expert for over 19 years being project manager, architect, developer on the network side and managing different kind of projects. And in the last six years, I go deeper in cyber security since I moved here to Canada.
David Redekop: Wow. So when you say you were born an engineer, what was the very first real life engineering work that you did that made it clear that that’s how you were born?
Rafael Ramirez: I start breaking up everything, putting apart everything from Betamax, VHS, video recording, whatever was available at our house. I was trying to figure out how it work and the why it worked like that. So I was very curious and this was something that my mom gave me because she didn’t have the opportunity to be an engineer, but she’s an engineer by design. And so she pushed this on us and I was lucky enough to have many different kind of objects at my house. Even a GPS on the 1990s, it was something that initiated my passion on electronics and everything that is in the technology world.
David Redekop: So when you started disassembling home appliances and stuff, was that something that your parents encouraged or was there like “Rafa not again” kind of responses?
Rafael Ramirez: They encouraged it. My mom was all about building and understanding how electrical things work. So since early stages, I remember having a scientific calculator and start coding on it. HP calculators then came when I was at school. So it was something they encouraged me and I think I never broke something that it was completely broke or that it was like essential to get grounded or something like that. But no, I never remember having issues breaking and putting things into parts.
David Redekop: Right. Do you ever trick your kids with your engineering passions or like playing practical jokes of any kind with them?
Rafael Ramirez: Current ones, yeah, I like sarcasm and double sense of things, but my kids are too small to figure it out. So, they’re still suffering without understanding me.
David Redekop: Well, I have a trick for you that worked wonders for me for years. And now they all know how it works, but for years they didn’t know. So, we had a family iMac in the middle of the kitchen with the kids having their own login, but of course I knew their passwords. And I installed the text-to-speech component on Mac OS. And then I would SSH into their account while they’re in front of it. And then I would use the whisper command, or the say command, I should say, with the voice called whisper. And then they’d be in the middle of doing something. I’d be like, “I’m watching you.” And that was like the computerized voice. They would speak to it and I’d be in the other room and I’d write a response to it. And this was of course to them almost seemed like AI and I just had them going for weeks and months on end. And eventually they figured out that it was only happening when I was nearby. And they made the connection that oh dad’s somehow doing this.
Rafael Ramirez: You made me realize about one thing I did recently. I was seeing my boy play in this game that is called Minecraft. So I was seeing that there were some zombies and things that I didn’t like. So I went in the command line and I remove everything. But a couple days ago he, my kid, came and said like “Dad, something weird is happening. Everyone sees these zombies and things and I don’t see them. It’s like they’re like ghosts for me.” And I didn’t realize that I was basically controlling his side only. Yeah. But his friends were still in the world. So basically they were seeing these things. I had to tell him that I basically somehow tweaked the game. So I have to bring the zombies back. Now that you’re telling that story made me remind about that one. And yes, sometimes you use your skills and sometimes the overcontrolling power doesn’t work.
David Redekop: Right. Our parents, I don’t know about your parents, you know what level of involvement they had with you at a young age. Obviously that encouraged you on the engineering side. My parents were not at all technologically inclined and so I did not have them playing any practical jokes on me that way. But they were also encouraging and I remember getting a Commodore 64 after working for my friend’s dad mowing his lawn for the summer. That was my way of earning a used Commodore 64 and that’s how I got my start in writing code in BASIC back in the day. Wow, it just brings back memories of what we could do back then. My first task was to build a full screen clock. I wanted an analog clock where the second marker moved, right? And to time that and to rewrite the pixels on the screen was really a fascinating logical process to make that and rewrite it. And it was so slow you had to time it so carefully that if you didn’t time it properly as far as redrawing on the screen the clock wouldn’t be accurate. And now when I think about the amount of effort we had to go through for just a single pixel change on the screen versus today, you know what we can do with something like OpenClaw, it’s crazy.
Rafael Ramirez: Yes, a big change from difficult to easier—from some people only managing to everyone managing with their own language.
David Redekop: Right. So at what point did you focus on cyber security as a core competency versus any other aspect of technology? What got you into that place?
Rafael Ramirez: So when I started in cyber security was something that I didn’t plan. Was basically something that came natural as a network engineer; firewalls and IPSs became the daily thing. I was part of this X-Force team in IBM and we were planning and getting prepared for when that day came. I remember WannaCry was around 2016 if I remember correctly when it happened and I flew to IBM Brazil basically to take care of some cyber security issues. But this was something new. It was what we planned in the tabletop exercises. The first thing that we learned is that there was so many things happening that we needed to split the teams—one team for the operations that were solving the things on ground and one team that was basically handling communication. And I don’t think I can set up a day different than that one that I can say that I started going deeply into what we call cyber security. And it was something natural. Then I came to Canada and I study two years in a college of cyber security and then it’s when I went deep into that domain—risk management. And I will say that’s when I got deeper into all of the domains that we now know.
David Redekop: Well, we’re very glad that you did because the amount of leadership that I’ve seen you apply to building a community and the sharing that you’ve done successfully and applying it at work. Canada is very fortunate to have you. How is that working out by the way? How did your immigration story work to Canada?
Rafael Ramirez: Right now I am without a path. So basically I am a temporal worker looking to see how to stay here. We’re waiting for the government with a new initiative that is called temporal residency to permanent residency. But aside of learning French, I don’t have a path right now or a clear view. So, I am living day by day, enjoying Canada, doing my best, raising my Canadian kids here and enjoying what this country can give me. It could be five more months or it can be 50 more years. We never know. But we’re lucky to be here.
David Redekop: Well, for what it’s worth, anybody else who appreciates what Raphael has done, you can check out some of his work on LinkedIn and support him in this journey. Raphael, clearly you are a top talent and we’re glad that you came. So, whoever can help this man stay in Canada, let’s do what we can. He’s on the bleeding edge of what makes technology safe to use. Your children, have they been to your home country to visit?
Rafael Ramirez: Yes, they have been. We don’t go too much because you know we have some security issues in our country currently. But yes, they have been there and they enjoy going to the farm and picking their own coffee.
David Redekop: Oh wow, that’s awesome. What security concerns would you have if you went back to stay or if you were to not have your visa renewed here?
Rafael Ramirez: Yeah, my country is going to a very big change. There is criminality on the raising. My kids have been raised here, so they will be in disadvantage because they don’t have that layer where they can protect themselves. So we will have to basically build it for them. But we’re hoping and we’re very positive and doing everything to stay here in Canada to keep them secure.
David Redekop: Very good. Rafael, let’s talk about AI and security. What are in your mind the major security concerns in artificial intelligence today for small and medium enterprises and even the enterprise itself?
Rafael Ramirez: When I think about small and medium companies or enterprises, I always think about building things that are practical, affordable, and scalable. These companies do not have the same amount of money or even people or talent to invest in this area. I normally focus on seven main things:
- Governance: Build a level of governance that supports your business; it’s very specific to the industry.
- Data: Getting the right data, how to access it, and controlling that access.
- Hygiene: Maintain a really good hygiene called MFA patching and maintaining system up to date.
- Third Parties: SaaS applications have become one of the critical paths for hackers to get into systems.
- Thread Detection: AI thread detection, because you cannot fight AI without AI.
- People (TTT): Technology, Trust, and Talent. Build good awareness and training for your talent.
- Incident Response: Preparedness for when that day comes to keep your business alive.
David Redekop: Very good. And one of the interesting things that I find about living in the year 2026 is that in all of human history there’s maybe 50 to 100 billion people that have ever lived. Out of those, we have less than 1% that have actually ever experienced a real innovation because innovation happened at a slow pace throughout our history. And yet here we are where you and I and our children are seeing innovation at such an incredibly rapid pace. Up until late last year, AI really was a chatbot that was smarter than chatbots before. And then all of a sudden things changed and now we have OpenClaw, which is unbelievable in my mind. It is equivalent to how life changed for me when I got my first dialup internet connection. And that’s where I feel like we are now again with AI being applied in a way that we’ve never seen before. Do you see it that way?
Rafael Ramirez: Yes, it’s moving fast. For me, it’s a new tool in the technology stack, maybe more risky. It’s bringing capabilities faster that we can consume it and I think that’s where the risk and the challenge is. I think we have never moved as fast in our whole history. Strategies that were not changed every five years are changing every single year. So it’s very challenging for the executive and leaders because as long as you’re applying something, something new is coming and you need to think on how to pivot into that.
David Redekop: Right. We have enterprises that are very cautious to adopt AI in a way where it isn’t going to wreck their business. And on the other extreme, we have startups using automation and OpenClaw with agents that can be set up in a matter of hours. And so you’ve got a little startup company with a single human that can operate many bots and basically compete with an organization of 50 people that took 10 years to build. Is there a way where we’re going to see a major reset because of that rapid innovation?
Rafael Ramirez: It depends how you use the tooling. If you’re putting it in sandboxes and learn about it, I don’t see big risk. Where I see big issues is this tendency of “we can screw it up and it doesn’t matter.” We have seen cloud providers launch applications that are not ready for the public. It’s the same like a knife; it can do very good things in a kitchen used by a chef, but it can do a lot of harm if it’s used outside of that environment.
David Redekop: Right. And when technology advances so much faster than public policy or the laws, we’re creating a delta that’s much larger than it’s ever been before. Those of us that are defenders say, “Wait a minute, we need to do this safely.” That overall trend towards more technology and automation should in the end be a net benefit for human flourishing. Is that what you think as well?
Rafael Ramirez: Oh yes. It’s a new tool that is making us advance 100% faster. You can buy knowledge for a few cents and that have never happened. But that also putting a new layer of pressure in humans because now we are the accountables. Some people do not understand that when you are getting it into a critical process, that’s another animal. Innovation comes from small changes, but AI have changed the mind making people think that they can scale things faster that they should and that’s where the risk lies.
David Redekop: Yeah, that’s a very good point—having a deterministic approach versus a probabilistic approach. The only way that a probabilistic approach can actually scale is for it to rely on a deterministic foundation.
Rafael Ramirez: Exactly. And that’s what we’re seeing with these new models. Stabilizing them is really hard. Even we’re doing agentic AI, we’re still focusing on learning how to manage and stabilize assistance. Currently, I can say we’re using about seven different models to run my current function. Now is the time to think what really adds value and set those foundations as we go forward.
David Redekop: I really like how you articulated all of the different pillars that are important to take care of AI security. Where does Zero Trust networking fit into your model there?
Rafael Ramirez: Zero Trust is a mindset that you have to infuse into everything that you do. It’s more of that risk mindset when you think “what could go wrong.” It’s easiest for us to see it in the access layer where you authenticate everyone every single time they move from systems. But you’re always running through that balance between performance and security. Zero Trust is a mindset that you have to apply to everything. There is a phrase that basically “never trust, always verify.”
David Redekop: Absolutely. Just to give you a quick background on what I felt was of a particular protective power in launching my first instance of an OpenClaw agent was to constrain its outbound internet access to only the resources of the skills that I have given it so that it can never have a runaway function. I’m going to apply Zero Trust networking around it as a way of applying guardrails. If we’re concerned in the future of any runaway AI processes, then that’s going to be one aspect that humans can always control. As long as you control what it can do online then you have an aspect that is retained inside of the human control.
Rafael Ramirez: Yeah I agree with you and you have to control both sides—what is going out and also what is going inside. Putting those guardrails at the network layer it has to be always thought about the outside and the inside.
David Redekop: Right. Speaking of the host file, there was an interesting story just last week of an antivirus software company where the attackers had actually disabled itself from updating by creating a host file entry that would resolve to itself. In Windows 11, the latest version, it’s set to read-only. So clearly Microsoft is already taking proactive steps to make it much more difficult for the host file to be abused in that sense.
Rafael Ramirez: Yes, everyone knows where the things start happening in the past. We’re closing those doors. Some people do not rely on DNS; they don’t remember we’re still relying on that layer. And now we have a new layer of constraints and risk. We have a DNS for agentic AI that is called ANS. Now we have AI that is coming and figuring out vulnerabilities in a speed that we weren’t able to do it before.
David Redekop: It’s like it’s the most aggressive double-edged sword that we have ever witnessed. AI is like a knife. A knife can be used to spread your butter, but a knife can also be used to murder. Now imagine that the knife makes its own decisions. And that is the cusp that we’re on right now.
Rafael Ramirez: The moment that transitions over to beyond digital content, that’s when things can get scary. Now this knife is available everywhere. We’re seeing seamlessly deploying WhatsApp; now people can access it with a voice call. We’re still on that stage where we’re still “free,” but there’s never free; we’re still the product. We don’t know how to secure these systems when they become public. When you have them in control inside, they’re beautiful because they can fail and you can control the failure.
David Redekop: Well, one of the ways that I like to think about some of the newer developments is that if it’s inside of a contained machine that has security by design, we have new startups making it simpler for you to run an existing model locally entirely internally. We saw the change in the industry that was made by DeepSeek. The fact that you can run it completely internally that it never talks to the internet whatsoever is a very compelling proposition.
Rafael Ramirez: It’s a normal swing. You go into the cloud then you go into your own machine. Now talking about GPUs, we’re talking about GPUs on the edge on the machine to run local models. All the fundamentals are the same as we were having in networking. People is talking about language filtering, and for me that’s a firewall. The capability is the same.
David Redekop: And thinking about positivity into the future, we’re at that initial state where we’re testing the guardrails. It’s going to come a time where we’re going to trust these systems. We build trust towards technology by seeing it perform exactly right over time.
Rafael Ramirez: Yeah. Coming back to my first trilogy of the three T’s—Technology, Trust, and Talent. People first. As we have the right people the technology and the trust will be created on the right way.
David Redekop: Talent, which is the human, is actually the most important ingredient. Rafael, maybe you have one more thought on a piece of wisdom, a tip that you want to leave with our audience.
Rafael Ramirez: Serve before you ask. Everything is about serving. We need to serve our societies and our communities.
David Redekop: I heard you say “serve before you ask.” And I think both are very appropoS. Shovel the driveway before you’re asked. Do the dishes before you’re asked. I love it.
Rafael Ramirez: That’s my main rule. Thank you for the time, David.
David Redekop: Thank you, Rafael.
Narrator: The defender log requires more than a conversation. It takes action, research, and collective wisdom. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and write a review. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you on the next episode.
1 post - 1 participant
The post TDL 016 | Speed, Risk, and Responsibility in the Age of AI | Rafael Ramirez appeared first on Security Boulevard.
Carly_Engelbrecht
Source: Security Boulevard
Source Link: https://securityboulevard.com/2026/02/tdl-016-speed-risk-and-responsibility-in-the-age-of-ai-rafael-ramirez/