In this CISO Tradecraft episode, host G Mark Hardy interviews Steve Shelton (https://www.linkedin.com/in/greenshoesteve/) of Green Shoe Consulting about the “State of Stress in Cybersecurity 2025” report and why burnout is widespread among cybersecurity leaders. Shelton explains the difference between beneficial stress (eustress) and chronic distress, how threat vs challenge interpretations shape performance, and why cybersecurity’s volatile, high-stakes environment amplifies stress, especially when CISOs have responsibility without authority and limited leadership training. They discuss systemic burnout drivers such as workload, autonomy, values alignment, recognition, and leadership behaviors like trust and delegation, plus different CISO leadership styles (strategic, adaptive, tactical, operational). Shelton describes efforts to build training and measurement tools for stress and energy, comments on AI-driven uncertainty, and shares the report download link at: https://www.greenshoeconsulting.com/stateofstressreport

Your SOC is drowning in alerts, false positives, and static tuning, while attackers evolve faster than your team can respond.

Analysts burn out chasing noise. Real threats slip through. And traditional metrics reward ticket volume instead of investigation quality, creating “Swiss cheese security.”

In this CISO Tradecraft episode, G. Mark Hardy and Oren Saban break down the rise of the Wisdom-Led, AI-driven SOC, where AI agents handle investigations and humans focus on judgment, prevention, and faster containment.

Big Thanks to Mate Security for sponsoring this episode. To learn more about their offerings please check out their website at

https://mate.security/

In this episode of CISO Tradecraft, host G Mark Hardy speaks with EJ Pappas of PKWARE and Ross Young about why AI-driven threats demand a shift from platform-centric security to a data-centric strategy.

CISOs still struggle to answer, “Where is our sensitive data?” as it sprawls across AI, endpoints, cloud, SaaS, and shared environments. In this conversation, we explore:

• Why CISOs still struggle with data visibility

• How vendor sprawl and fragmented toolsets create blind spots

• The difference between structured and unstructured data risk

• Why AI accelerates both defense and mistakes

• DLP vs. encryption: complementary, not competing controls

• Commonly missed exposure areas (test/QA environments, cloud storage)

• Compliance drivers including GLBA, PCI DSS, HIPAA, HITRUST CSF, and NIST SP 800-171

Learn more at PKWARE.com/demo or contact EJ.Pappas@PKWARE.com