Attack, Defend, Govern: The AI Security Playbook

Session 2: AI IN CYBERSECURITY

Attack, Defend, Govern:

The AI Security Playbook

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Overview:

AI is now embedded in every layer of the cybersecurity landscape. Attackers are using it to launch autonomous operations, generate convincing deepfakes and discover zero-day vulnerabilities at speed. Defenders are building AI-driven SOCs that detect and respond to threats in real time. And organisations everywhere are grappling with shadow AI, model risk and a wave of new regulation including the EU AI Act. This stream brings together security vendors at the cutting edge to address the full AI picture: offensive threats, defensive tools, governance frameworks, workforce readiness and the strategic shifts that will define secure organisations in 2026 and beyond.

Facilitator

Conference Room 1 – Session 2

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Markus Melin

Co-Founder and COO, NROC Security

Markus Melin, Product and digital transformation business leader working with global / international business. Modern and inspiring people leader with ability to grow people. Proven track record on turning around businesses to new strategic direction with start-up attitude. Markus Melin has 20+ years of experience in software business with different industries. Excellent knowledge on multiple industries, such as Automotive, Finance, Insurance, Retail just to mention a few. Working with complex multi-cloud (both private and public) environments including sensor systems, driving purpose-built sales, marketingand go-to-market to a successful growth, also with M&A. Industry thought leader. In the past, running R&D and development units, working with business applications and digitalisation of enterprises – Cyber Security product development and development of Cyber Security as a Service / MSSP services. He is the Co-Founder and COO in Gen AI cybersecurity. 

Panelists

Mark Olding

MSP Product Specialist, Bitdefender

Mark Olding is a passionate cybersecurity professional with deep expertise in Channel Enablement, Endpoint Security, Email Security, and Threat Protection. As an MSP Product Specialist at Bitdefender, he helps partners stay ahead of evolving threats through cutting-edge MDR and threat intelligence solutions.

Known for his engaging public speaking and impactful partner training sessions, Mark brings complex cybersecurity topics to life – empowering MSPs and channel partners to build stronger, smarter security practices.

Before joining Bitdefender, Mark worked as a Channel Sales Engineer at Mimecast, driving MSP and distribution enablement for multilayered email security and human risk management. He’s also held senior presales roles at Sophos, Kaspersky, and Symantec, helping organisations and partners elevate their cyber resilience through endpoint, XDR, and cloud security innovation.

Presentation on:

From Exposure to Control: Using AI to Reduce Your Attack Surface by Up to 95%

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From Exposure to Control: Using AI to Reduce Your Attack Surface by Up to 95%

AI is reshaping cyber threats – enabling faster, more targeted attacks that exploit identities, user behaviour, and legitimate tools. As the attack surface expands across endpoints and cloud environments, traditional security approaches are struggling to keep up.

This session explores how organisations can shift from reactive defence to proactive, AI-driven attack surface reduction. By dynamically identifying and restricting unnecessary risk, businesses can significantly reduce exposure while maintaining productivity.

Adam Denyer-Hampton

International Director for Solutions Architecting, SecurityScorecard

Adam Denyer-Hampton is the International Director for Solutions Architecting at SecurityScorecard. Adam has over 15 years of experience in successfully delivering large and complex IT security solutions for major global companies, across Europe and APAC, including the defence and government agencies. Prior to joining SecurityScorecard, Adam held key technical roles at companies such as SafeNet, SourceFire (part of Cisco Systems) and IT Security Experts, where he managed solution deployments and technical consultations to meet customer requirements and successfully onboard them to new solutions.

Presenting on: 

Leveraging AI to Modernise Third-Party Risk Management

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Leveraging AI to Modernise Third-Party Risk Management

With the likelihood of third-party breaches doubling to 35% over the last year, manual risk management is no longer a match for 24/7 AI-driven attacks. In this session, we will discuss the building blocks of a threat-informed, AI-accelerated Third-Party Risk Management program. We will explore how AI can help streamline processes and increase efficacy, moving beyond ineffectual data points to provide continuous and improved visibility into third-party risk.

Molly McManamon

Sales Development Lead, usecure

Molly is Head of Sales Development at usecure, where she leads efforts to connect MSPs and IT leaders with solutions that strengthen security awareness and human risk management. With a background spanning sales development, coaching, and technology, she brings a practical, people-first approach to building high-performing teams and customer relationships.

Presenting on: 

Cybersecurity Efficiency Through Automation and AI

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Cybersecurity Efficiency Through Automation and AI

Organisations are under pressure to deliver stronger security with fewer resources. Boards expect measurable outcomes. Compliance demands continue to grow. Manual approaches no longer scale. 

In this session, Molly McManamon from usecure explores how automation and AI are transforming human risk management. From onboarding and phishing simulations to policy management and compliance reporting, security awareness must now deliver measurable results with minimal admin. 

Molly will examine how organisations can reduce manual effort, target real user risk, and scale security awareness across the workforce without adding headcount. The session will also explore how AI driven attacks are increasing pressure on employee awareness, and why continuous, adaptive training is replacing traditional static approaches. 

Attendees will leave with practical ways to automate human risk management, improve compliance readiness, and build a security awareness programme that demonstrates clear value to the business. 

Ideal for IT and security leaders looking to reduce administrative overhead, strengthen organisational security posture, and turn human risk into a managed, measurable part of their security strategy. 

Colin McLean

Vice President, International Sales, Nothreat

Colin McLean is Vice President, International Sales at Nothreat, a global leader in AI-powered cybersecurity solutions, where he drives the company’s strategic expansion across the EMEA region. A seasoned cybersecurity executive with over two decades of experience, Colin specialises in helping large enterprises tackle their most complex security challenges – delivering the speed, scale, and simplicity needed to protect critical IT environments in an increasingly threat-filled landscape.

Throughout his career, Colin has held senior leadership roles at some of the most respected names in cybersecurity, including Securonix and Arbor Networks. Across these organisations, he built and executed go-to-market strategies, scaled operations, and consistently delivered revenue growth by connecting enterprise customers with the security solutions they need to stay ahead of evolving threats.

A collaborative leader with a deep customer focus, Colin brings both strategic vision and hands-on expertise to the challenge of securing today’s enterprise – making him a compelling voice on the future of AI-driven cybersecurity.

Presenting on: 

AI vs. AI: The Cyber War Is Here. Are You Ready?

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AI vs. AI: The Cyber War Is Here. Are You Ready?

The cybersecurity threat landscape has undergone a fundamental transformation. Large Language Models (LLMs) have placed powerful code-generation capabilities in the hands of attackers, enabling polymorphic malware that rewrites itself with every execution and social engineering attacks that are indistinguishable from genuine human communication. Every security tool built on the principle of recognising what has been seen before is now structurally inadequate.

This session introduces a different paradigm: preemptive AI-native defence. Nothreat’s technology is designed from first principles to detect not what a threat looks like, but what it does. By reasoning from behaviour rather than signatures, Nothreat eliminates the fundamental vulnerability that reactive security carries into the age of AI-generated attacks.

Attendees will understand why the arms race model of cybersecurity is broken, how behavioural AI can neutralise LLM-based polymorphic attacks and AI-driven social engineering without prior knowledge of the threat, and what zero false positives, zero human intervention, and fully automated deployment in minutes means in practice – across environments from enterprise servers to IoT devices.

The session concludes with the announcement of Nothreat Vanguard, the world’s first AI-native network switch with built-in cybersecurity – a product that moves security from a layer applied above the network to one embedded within it. This is not a session about keeping up with attackers. It is about why Nothreat was already ahead before the AI threat era began – and how that structural advantage compounds going forward.

Viral Vora

UK, Ireland and South Africa – Distribution Manager, Hornetsecurity

Viral Vora is Distribution Manager for the UK, Ireland and South Africa at Hornetsecurity, a position held for over five years. Across his career, Viral has had 15 years of experience across IT hardware, software, and cybersecurity markets. He works closely with channel partners to strengthen security across Microsoft 365 environments, with a focus on AI-driven threat protection, compliance, and scalable services for MSPs.

Presenting on: 

AI Expanded the Attack Surface. Now Organisation Need an AI Security Analyst

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AI Expanded the Attack Surface. Now Organisation Need an AI Security Analyst

AI is rapidly increasing the attack surface across Microsoft 365 environments, with automated phishing, impersonation, and AI-generated threats scaling faster than traditional defences can keep up. This session explores how organisations can respond with AI-driven cyber assistance, enabling security teams to strengthen email security, reduce analyst workload, and deliver scalable protection in the AI era.

Cyber Conference 2026

KeyNote:

Power, Politics and AI: The Global Forces Driving Cyber Risk in 2026
Power, Politics and AI: The Global Forces Driving Cyber Risk in 2026

Cybersecurity is no longer just a technology problem; it’s also now a geopolitical one. State-sponsored actors are targeting critical infrastructure with increasing boldness, AI-powered political attacks are testing democratic institutions, and regulatory frameworks around data sovereignty are reshaping how organisations operate across borders. This opening keynote sets the tone for the day by examining the global forces that are driving cyber risk in 2026: from geopolitical disruption and the weaponisation of AI to the shifting regulatory landscape that every Irish organisation needs to navigate.

Watch On Demand

AI IN CYBERSECURITY

Attack, Defend, Govern: The AI Security Playbook
Attack, Defend, Govern: The AI Security Playbook

AI is now embedded in every layer of the cybersecurity landscape. Attackers are using it to launch autonomous operations, generate convincing deepfakes and discover zero-day vulnerabilities at speed. Defenders are building AI-driven SOCs that detect and respond to threats in real time. And organisations everywhere are grappling with shadow AI, model risk and a wave of new regulation including the EU AI Act. This stream brings together security vendors at the cutting edge to address the full AI picture: offensive threats, defensive tools, governance frameworks, workforce readiness and the strategic shifts that will define secure organisations in 2026 and beyond.

Watch On Demand

MSP & CHANNEL

Scaling Security: Building Profitable MSP Practices for 2026
Scaling Security: Building Profitable MSP Practices for 2026

MSPs serve as the frontline defence for hundreds of SMBs while managing their own operational and commercial pressures. This dedicated stream addresses security service delivery models, evolving customer expectations around compliance and cyber insurance, and practical approaches to vendor selection and stack consolidation. Speakers from successful MSPs share what’s working.

Not Available On Demand

DATA & INFRASTRUCTURE DEFENCE

Layered Defence: Protecting Data and Infrastructure Across Your Environment
Layered Defence: Protecting Data and Infrastructure Across Your Environment

No single control point is sufficient, and data remains the ultimate target. This session brings together endpoint, network, cloud and data security perspectives to explore how organisations can build layered defences that work together. We address EDR, next-generation firewalls, cloud workload protection, data discovery, classification and loss prevention, with particular focus on the risks introduced by generative AI adoption, the insider threat challenge, and the operational reality of tool proliferation and alert fatigue.

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REGULATORY COMPLIANCE & GOVERNANCE

The Compliance Reality Check: What Irish Organisations Actually Need to Do
The Compliance Reality Check: What Irish Organisations Actually Need to Do

The deadlines have passed and regulators are watching. This session moves beyond theory to examine what NIS2 and DORA compliance looks like in practice. We address incident reporting, supply chain risk requirements, board-level accountability and the documentation regulators expect, with lessons from organisations that have been through the process.

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RANSOMWARE & RESILIENCE

When Prevention Fails: Ransomware, Recovery and Operational Resilience
When Prevention Fails: Ransomware, Recovery and Operational Resilience

The question is no longer whether you’ll face a serious incident but how quickly you can recover. With ransomware attacks increasing in volume and sophistication, this session addresses the full lifecycle from prevention through to containment and recovery. We examine the critical importance of immutable backups, tested recovery procedures, and the often-overlooked challenge of Active Directory restoration.

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EMERGING THREATS

From Deepfakes to Quantum: The Next Wave of Threats You Need to Prepare for Now
From Deepfakes to Quantum: The Next Wave of Threats You Need to Prepare for Now

Deepfake technology is already being used to impersonate executives and bypass verification. Quantum computing threatens to undermine the encryption we rely on today. And geopolitical shifts are reshaping who is targeting whom and why. This session cuts through the noise to examine the emerging threats that Irish organisations need to take seriously now, not in five years’ time, and provides practical frameworks for building preparedness into your security strategy today.

Not Available On Demand

IDENTITY, DECEPTION & HUMAN RISK

Identity Compromise, Deception and the Human Attack Surface
Identity Compromise, Deception and the Human Attack Surface

Attackers don’t need to find a vulnerability when they can steal a credential or trick a human. From AI-generated phishing that’s virtually indistinguishable from legitimate communication to credential theft, privilege escalation and Active Directory compromise, the most common path into organisations now runs through people and their identities. This session examines how social engineering and identity attacks are converging, why Zero Trust must address both technical controls and human factors, and what practical defences look like when the threat is designed to bypass every instinct your users rely on.

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Closing Panel:

Security Leadership 2026: What Keeps CISOs Awake at Night
Security Leadership 2026: What Keeps CISOs Awake at Night

The day has covered a lot of ground, from geopolitical disruption and AI-powered attacks to regulatory pressure, ransomware resilience and the challenge of protecting critical infrastructure. In this closing panel, security leaders from across Irish industry reflect on what they’ve heard, share what resonates most with their own organisations, and offer a candid perspective on the decisions that will define cybersecurity leadership in the year ahead. Expect honest conversation about skills shortages, board-level expectations, AI governance and what it actually takes to keep an organisation secure in 2026.

Watch On Demand

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