After 152 conversations across security, technology, and creative disciplines, five recurring patterns emerge that challenge how organizations think about visibility, integration, and workflow design. This episode connects those patterns into a single view of what effective security actually requires heading into 2026.
Across 152 conversations this year, a set of recurring patterns kept surfacing, regardless of whether the discussion focused on application security, software supply chain risk, AI systems, or creative work. The industries varied. The roles varied. The challenges did not.
One theme rises above the rest: visibility remains the foundation of everything else, yet organizations continue to accept blind spots as normal. Asset inventories are incomplete. Build systems are poorly understood. Dependencies change faster than teams can track them. The issue is not a lack of tools. It is a willingness to tolerate uncertainty because discovery feels hard or disruptive.
Another pattern is equally consistent. Integration matters more than novelty. New features, including AI-driven ones, sound compelling until they fail to connect with what teams already rely on. Security programs fracture when tools operate in isolation. Coverage looks strong on paper while gaps quietly expand in practice. When tools fail to integrate into existing environments, they create complexity instead of reducing risk.
Security also continues to struggle with how it shows up in daily work. Programs succeed when security is embedded into workflows, automated where possible, and invisible until it matters. They fail when security acts as a gate that arrives after decisions are already made. Teams either adopt security naturally or route around it entirely. There is no neutral middle ground.
Context repeatedly separates effective leadership from noise. Risk only becomes meaningful when it is framed in terms of business operations, delivery speed, and real tradeoffs. Leaders who understand how the business actually functions communicate risk clearly and make better decisions under pressure.
Finally, creativity remains undervalued in security conversations. Automation should remove repetitive tasks so people can focus on judgment, problem solving, and design. The same mindset that produces elegant guitars, photographs, or products applies directly to building resilient security programs.
These five patterns are not independent ideas. Together, they describe a shift toward security that is visible, integrated, contextual, workflow-driven, and human-centered.
Read the full article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/five-patterns-from-152-podcast-episodes-2025-changed-i-martin-cissp-st1ge
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This story represents the results of an interactive collaboration between Human Cognition and Artificial Intelligence.
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Sincerely, Sean Martin and TAPE9
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Sean Martin is a life-long musician and the host of the Music Evolves Podcast; a career technologist, cybersecurity professional, and host of the Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast; and is also the co-host of the On Location Event Coverage Podcast. These shows are all part of ITSPmagazine—which he co-founded with his good friend Marco Ciappelli, to explore and discuss topics at The Intersection of Technology, Cybersecurity, and Society.™️
Would you like Sean to work with you on a topic/series to help you tell your story? Visit his services page to learn more: https://www.seanmartin.com/services
Want to connect with Sean and Marco On Location at an event or conference near you? See where they will be next: https://www.itspmagazine.com/on-location
To learn more about Sean, visit his personal website.
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Five Patterns From 152 Podcast Episodes from 2025 That Changed How Sean Martin Thinks About Technology, Business, and Security Heading into 2026
Across 152 episodes this year—The Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast, Music Evolves, On Location, and Brand [00:01:00] Stories—Sean kept hearing the same fundamental challenges surface in different contexts. Whether Sean was talking with CISOs at RSAC Conference, watching a guitar maker explain her craft, or unpacking software supply chain attacks, certain truths kept emerging.
Here's what matters most, based on what Sean asked, heard, and said throughout the year.
1. Visibility Is the Only Problem That Matters [And We Keep Solving It Wrong]
Forty episodes hammered home the same point: you can't secure what you can't see. But here's the twist—organizations are drowning in visibility tools while remaining blind to actual risk.
HD Moore, during Black Hat put it plainly: we're often overlooking what's actually there. The problem isn't a lack of scanning technology. It's that security teams have normalized incomplete inventories. They've accepted that [00:02:00] 15-20% of their environment is "unknown" because discovery is hard.
The software supply chain conversations made this worse. Malicious packages aren't exploiting accidental coding errors—they're engineered to steal credentials and compromise environments. And the standard advice to "only use vetted packages" is worthless when the open source ecosystem updates faster than any vetting process can match.
Organizations should enhance visibility into their build systems specifically. Not just network visibility. Not just endpoint visibility. Build pipeline visibility—because that's where attackers are winning.
2. Integration Beats Innovation [Every Single Time]
At RSAC Conference 2025, every vendor wanted to talk about their AI features. But Vivin Sathyan from ManageEngine asked a better question: does this actually [00:03:00] work with what customers already have?
The tool proliferation problem isn't about having too many tools. It's about having tools that don't talk to each other, creating gaps that look like coverage. CISO, Pieter VanIperen, called this out directly—most CISOs are getting this wrong because they're optimizing for capability instead of integration.
CISOs should assess vendor pitches by asking: "What specific problem does this solve in my context, and how does it work with the seven other tools I already bought?" Not: "What's your roadmap for AI?"
Stellar Cyber's approach presented at Black Hat illustrated this. Their autonomous SOC platform isn't trying to replace everything—it's designed to integrate with existing endpoint solutions. Human-augmented, not human-replaced.
3. Security-as-Workflow or Security-as-Roadblock [00:04:00] [There Is No Middle Ground]
Spyros Gasteratos, described to me during OWASP® Foundation AppSec Global in Barcelona Spain, the difference between security programs that teams want to use versus security programs that teams route around. The distinction is brutal.
Security can't be a separate gate. It has to be embedded in the workflow—automated, contextual, and invisible until it matters. Josh Grossman reinforced this when discussing ASVS v5: the goal is making secure application development the default path, not the hard path.
ThreatLocker's Danny Jenkins crystallized the operational challenge: organizations want zero trust security without zero trust complexity. They want simplicity without sacrificing control. That's not contradictory—it's the actual requirement.
This pattern showed up in public health too. [00:05:00] Jim St. Clair described how AI should enhance data management and decision-making, not create new systems that compete with existing workflows. When reporting requirements create 18-month delays for cancer registry data, the problem isn't a lack of technology—it's that technology hasn't been integrated into the actual work.
4. Context Is the Skill That Separates Good CISOs from Irrelevant Ones
CISOs must understand business context to communicate risk effectively. Not "business alignment"—actual understanding of what the business does, how it makes money, and where technology enables or constrains that.
Phillip Miller, MA, CISSP, during RSAC Conference 2025, highlighted the tension: CISOs need to connect with the startup community and understand market [00:06:00] dynamics, while simultaneously managing security operations. The ones who close the door on innovation to focus purely on controls become irrelevant quickly.
This means being comfortable with ambiguity. It means adapting to changing circumstances rather than defaulting to frameworks. It means knowing which vendor pitches are solving your actual problems versus which are solving problems you don't have.
The 40 episodes covering software supply chain risk demonstrated why this matters. The speed of open source package updates has reshaped risk across development pipelines. Security leaders who still think about supply chain risk the way they did three years ago are operating with outdated mental models.
5. The Creative Dimension We Keep Ignoring
Cindy Hulej, a luthier in NYC, builds guitars from salvaged [00:07:00] materials—reclaimed wood, repurposed electronics, materials with history. Her process mirrors what effective security programs require: understanding constraints, working with what exists, and creating something functional and elegant from imperfect components.
This isn't a metaphor. It's a direct parallel.
Security analysts shouldn't spend time on mundane tasks that automation can handle. They should focus on creative problem-solving—the same way a guitar maker solves acoustic challenges or a photographer solves composition challenges.
Rupesh Chokshi from Akamai Technologies asked whether organizations are integrating security into their innovation processes or treating them separately. Most are doing the latter. They're building innovation teams and security teams and hoping they'll somehow coordinate.
But when bots rewrite the buyer's journey and AI agents interact with your brand without human oversight, the creative and the secure aren't [00:08:00] separate concerns. They're the same concern viewed from different angles.
What This Means for How We Work
After 152 episodes, Sean is convinced the industry is solving the wrong problems exceptionally well.
We're building more sophisticated detection when the real issue is integration. We're adding AI features when the real issue is workflow design. We're buying more tools when the real issue is understanding business context.
Sean suggests that the organizations that will succeed in 2026 aren't the ones with the most advanced technology. They're the ones that understand what problems they're actually trying to solve, can see their entire environment clearly, and have embedded security into how work gets done—not as a separate function that reviews work after it's complete.
That requires CIOs and CISOs who think like business leaders, security tools that [00:09:00] work like collaboration platforms as part of the environment [not bolted on], and development processes where security is invisible because it's baked in everywhere.
Forty episodes on software supply chain risk. Dozens of conversations about tool consolidation. Multiple discussions about human-augmented autonomous systems. All pointing to the same conclusion: visibility, integration, workflow, context, and creativity aren't five separate priorities.
They're five dimensions of the same fundamental shift in how effective security actually works.
Join the Conversation
[00:09:43] For developers: Where does security actually show up in your daily work today? Is it embedded in the build process, or does it arrive as feedback after decisions are already locked in?
For application security and security operations teams: Which part of your environment do you still struggle to see [00:10:00] clearly: assets, dependencies, build pipelines, or behavior? What blind spots have you learned to accept that maybe you should not?
For CISOs and security leaders: When was the last time you retired a tool because it failed to integrate, even if it had strong standalone capabilities? What tradeoffs are you making between visibility, complexity, and speed?
For engineering and product leaders: Does your security program accelerate delivery by removing friction, or slow it down by adding checkpoints? Where does security feel like part of the workflow, and where does it feel external?
[00:10:40] For business leaders: Can you explain your top security risks in terms of revenue impact, customer trust, or operational continuity without referencing a framework or a control set?
[00:10:52] For vendors: How does your product reduce ambiguity for teams already overloaded with signals and tools? What [00:11:00] problem does it solve inside an existing workflow, not alongside it?
Share what is working, what is failing quietly, and what you have stopped pretending is fine. Sean reads the comments and brings these perspectives into future conversations.
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About Sean Martin
Sean Martin is a life-long musician and the host of the Music Evolves Podcast; [00:12:00] a career technologist, cybersecurity professional, and host of the Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast; and is also the co-host of the On Location Event Coverage Podcast. These shows are all part of ITSPmagazine—which he co-founded with his good friend Marco Ciappelli, to explore and discuss topics at The Intersection of Technology, Cybersecurity, and Society.
Would you like Sean to work with you on a topic/series to help you tell your story? Visit his services page to learn more: seanmartin.com/services
Want to connect with Sean and Marco On Location at an event or conference near you? See where they will be next: itspmagazine.com/on-location
To learn more about Sean, visit his personal website at seanmartin.com​[00:13:00]