Building Defense for the Agentic Era: Kevin Mandia

Kevin Mandia, founder of Mandiant and CEO of Armadin, tells a16z’s David George that AI shifts cyber from human speed to machine speed, giving attackers a near-term edge. He says Armadin’s AI red teaming has found 90+ production zero-days at Fortune 500 customers and argues CISOs need autonomous defense, continuous testing, and faster response.

Key points

• AI can probe thousands of attack paths in microseconds; open models are already good enough for cyber abuse.
• Armadin says it has found 90+ zero-days at customer sites this year, including Fortune 500 firms.
• Traditional pen testing is mostly hygiene; real attackers require exploit verification and continuous red teaming.
• Armadin Blue aims to turn exploit findings into autonomous compensating controls and response.
• SOC workflows with humans in detect/respond loops will be too slow; prevention and response are converging.
• Mandia expects attribution to get harder as AI makes less-skilled attackers far more capable.