Serious discussions this week as Christina & Rory look more closely at how a combination of physical and digital threats are bringing the effects of the conflict in the Middle East home to people across a wide region. Datacenter outages, AI-powered targeting and large-scale hacktivist attacks outline the heightened vulnerability of critical infrastructure.

AWS UAE data center hit by outage following military strikes across the region

Iran war heralds era of AI-powered bombing quicker than ‘speed of thought’

Iran Cyber Front: Hacktivist Activity Rises, but State-Sponsored Attacks Stay Low

As War Continues, Pro-Iranian Actors Launch Barrage of Cyberattacks

AI NEWS

GenAI content spawns a new acronym

Microsoft gets pissed at new AI term - I wonder why?

AI Agent scans GitHub for exploitable Actions - asks for crypto

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Want to leave some feedback and suggestions but would prefer not to write an email? You can leave us a voicemail (90 seconds max). We will share any that are not too spicy in the following episode.

SpeakPipe link - https://www.speakpipe.com/Cyber_Sidekicks

Or, send us an email:

• Christina Richmond – christina@richmondadvisorygroup.com
• Rory Duncan – rory@richmondadvisorygroup.com

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Technology we use

• Podcast Recording Platform – Cleanfeed.com
• Cyber Sidekicks Show Host – Podbean.com
• Edited & mastered in GarageBand

This week we discuss some of the trends, new directions and common approaches of some of this year's RSAC 2026 Innovation Sandbox Finalists! We also cover the latest M&A News: Palo Alto Networks announcing their intention to buy AI endpoint security platform Koi; the pitfalls of using an AI-generated random password (hint: they're not actually unique or necessarily secure...), and; the latest threat from LLM "distillation".....

NEWS

Palo Alto Networks to Acquire Koi in Reported $400 Million Transaction

Your AI-generated password isn't random: it just looks that way

Detecting & Preventing Distillation Attacks

Leave us a message!

Want to leave some feedback and suggestions but would prefer not to write an email? You can leave us a voicemail (90 seconds max). We will share any that are not too spicy in the following episode.

SpeakPipe link - https://www.speakpipe.com/Cyber_Sidekicks

Or, send us an email:

• Christina Richmond – christina@richmondadvisorygroup.com
• Rory Duncan – rory@richmondadvisorygroup.com

Subscribe to our Newsletter - "Signal, not noise" Our monthly newsletter is free to subscribers! Sign-up now at Richmond Advisory Group.

Technology we use

• Podcast Recording Platform – Cleanfeed.com
• Cyber Sidekicks Show Host – Podbean.com
• Edited & mastered in GarageBand

In the run-up to RSAC 2026 we have the first of a series of shows highlighting some of the new and innovative cybersecurity firms in the event's Innovation Sandbox Top 10 Final. This week, Christina & Rory chat with Hanah-Marie Darley, Chief AI Officer at Geordie.ai about how to govern AI agents by deeply understanding what they are capable of, their behaviour, and how to manage and govern them through the context that they are operating in, on a minute-by-minute basis.

Leave us a message!

Want to leave some feedback and suggestions but would prefer not to write an email? You can leave us a voicemail (90 seconds max). We will share any that are not too spicy in the following episode.

SpeakPipe link - https://www.speakpipe.com/Cyber_Sidekicks

Or, send us an email:

• Christina Richmond – christina@richmondadvisorygroup.com
• Rory Duncan – rory@richmondadvisorygroup.com

Subscribe to our Newsletter - "Signal, not noise" Our monthly newsletter is free to subscribers! Sign-up now at Richmond Advisory Group.

Technology we use

• Podcast Recording Platform – Cleanfeed.com
• Cyber Sidekicks Show Host – Podbean.com
• Edited & mastered in GarageBand