Will AI Take Cybersecurity Jobs? The Real Answer (Good, Bad & Ugly)

AI is changing cybersecurity faster than ever… but what does that actually mean for YOU?

In this episode of the Cybersecurity Mentors Podcast, we break down the good, the bad, and the ugly of AI in cybersecurity—and most importantly, what you should be doing right now to stay ahead.

We cover:

• How AI is becoming a force multiplier for cybersecurity teams 
• The truth about AI replacing entry-level jobs (and why it’s NOT that simple) 
• The biggest risks: over-reliance, automation, and attacker advantages 
• Real-world examples of how we’re using AI today 
• A practical playbook to future-proof your cybersecurity career 

Bottom line:
AI isn’t replacing cybersecurity professionals—but it is changing the game. The people who win will be the ones who learn how to use it.

Come hang out with us in the Cybersecurity Mentors Skool community. It’s free to join.

Transcript

Cold Open And Mindset

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Could you teach me? First learn stand, then learn fly. Nature rules on your son, not the mind. I know what you're trying to do. I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it. What is the most inspiring thing I ever said to you? Don't be an idiot. Changed my life.

The Good Side Of AI

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Welcome back to the Cybersecurity Mentors Podcast. On this episode, we're going to talk about the hot topic. We talked about it in different ways. We always mention something about it. You're probably tired of hearing it, but it's not going away. And really combining cybersecurity and AI and what this means, we're going to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly, and what you should do about it. You know, what are some playbooks? What you should be actually implementing today. Um, and really just how everything's changing. This podcast is going to come out, and then within a week, it may not be obsolete, but it might be, you know, dated, right? So don't take this for gospel. Although I do think everything we're going to talk about is solid for at least for some period of time. But um, yeah, everybody knows about this. We're talking about it, I think every day we're talking about it as things are changing, as we are discussing this um, mythos, the mystical mythos just came out recently, and nobody, you know, only special people have access, and and you know, it's gonna change the world, it's gonna find zero days and matters of of minutes and all those all those bad, scary things. Um, but really there's some fundamental things, even as part of that, that you should be thinking about that we're going to talk about. So, with that being said, let's start with the good AI, the good, the light side.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

AI is uh saving lives, man. Kicking butt taking names, really. I mean, it's changing the world. Really, it really is. In terms of just overall usage, I mean, if you're not using AI right now, you're living under a rock. Like, seriously, right? It with all the different platforms and just what it can do to make your life easier. Now, people say, hey, you hear it in the news, AI is making people dumb. Now, it all depends how you use it, right? If you're using it as a tool for good to help you improve you, make you more efficient, um, that's that's good. If you're using it as a crutch, that is where it's gonna come back and bite you in the butt. And we've talked about this many, many, many times. AI is a AI is great, but AI is a tool and you should use it as a tool. But in terms of just overall, uh, especially for cybersecurity, AI is a force multiplier. It gives you um basically superpowers. And if you are an analyst, cybersecurity analyst with some of the some of these cybersecurity tools are already implementing an AI feature or just an AI add-on to their tools, which is allowing them to review log so large amounts of logs at super light speed. And it's looking for behavior patterns, analytics. I mean, you're just it's looking for all kinds of things much quicker than a human being would do. So it is helping in a cybersecurity standpoint, us, the blue team, the defenders, to help us find things much quicker and helping with our jobs as well. I have to say, we are we have been using it, we are starting to use it, like we as in our team, and it's just helping with automation, it's helping us kind of go through a number of different things that we would we would we would call it grunt work. Now, one thing about this episode too is we're gonna answer that question of will A AI take away entry-level cybersecurity jobs? The answer is no, um, in my opinion. So I want to hear what you think later, John, but but it is going to help and it's going to reduce a lot of the grunt work that maybe some entry-level people would have to do. Um, but it's gonna allow them to then focus on bigger things. Maybe let maybe level two stuff, maybe all the grunt work AI can do, and then that steps up your current human workforce to up their game, and then they focus on level two type of stuff. So it's not gonna replace it, it's going to help and it's going to allow people to not be bogged down and worn out and just go crazy looking at all these kinds of alerts, all these kinds of logs. It's going to help kind of filter that that stuff out and then be be more be more specific with what actually matters. Now, like John said, when this episode goes live, things are gonna change. Things are gonna be completely different in the AI world. But one thing is for sure, it's not going anywhere. And it's not that it's going to arrive into cybersecurity. It is already here and it is changing the game in a good way.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Yeah, and like just Steve said, we are we are using it and we're using it in different ways. We're using it, we're building out our tool set, we're building, we're building our own tools. So before you might need to have, you know, go buy this$100,000 software tool, or now you'd be like, wait, wait a minute, maybe we can just write our own and build the tool set that we need that we're lacking because it gives you that that capability. And I've talked about this before, but when I started in higher ed, they used to do their own thing. They would say, Hey, we're we're we're we're a university, we'll just write our own software. Um, but though those people would leave, the grad student that they had who wrote it left, and then nobody knew how to how it worked, how it what the code was, they couldn't make changes to it. And now, um, and then so what they did is they shifted more to a corporate model where they were buying, you know, hey, I need somebody to call for support when this thing breaks. And and I saw that as a good thing. Um, but I think that's gonna shift back to, wait a minute, well, I mean, if even if somebody left, we could use AI to go read that code and say, hey, what is this thing doing? Right? Let help us understand it, help us update it. So I think that's that's opening up the mindset of a lot of people of man, we could just use this to help build out what we have. And we, we, our team is already doing this on the offensive side and the defensive side. So you need to definitely, all the things that Steve said, be aware of that. But it is awesome that you have another tool that you can help with learning. It can help you understand a concept that normally might take you hours to figure out and like, hey, break this down, explain it like I'm five, drill into the details. Um, I again that leads to humans are lazy. Everybody knows we're all lazy, so you have to, I'm gonna leave this into the the bad, but you have to make sure that you don't just rely on that and always do that because you will it is a skill that you have to make sure that you you are using the skills and not just using that crutch. But that it is awesome to have this, it is very, very, very good at taking a lot of data, parsing through that data, and giving you what's what quickly and usually doing it in an accurate way. Uh, and I mean, we're using it all the time. Again, you should be using it um as you do things because if you get if you don't learn how to use it, when you show up for those jobs, they're gonna be looking for people that already know how to do both, not just the the basic skills, but basic skills with AI. Absolutely. Um so we'll see, we'll see how it turns out. Right now, I'm optimistic for the good that it's gonna really, I mean, may imagine a world where there are no vulnerabilities in software because good AI has written software, although today it's learned off it's learned from bad examples, so it's not writing good code. But I think there is a world where you could have, if everybody's using it, there's good to this and bad, but writing zero software defect code, or at least having it review for you to reduce that code to bare minimum software bugs. That it's not impossible. It is possible, which means over time less vulnerabilities, which means less zero days, which means less patching, which means less exploitation of those vulnerabilities. So, you know, we'll see. We'll see how this turns out, but I'm optimistic that that could help us get there.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Absolutely. So, what are some ways that you are using AI right now? I mean, they don't have to be all cybersecurity, but I like one example came up for me. Like I have a lemon tree, okay? It's it's puny, it's growing, but I have it in a pot. And, you know, I live in South Carolina, so it's not the best weather for a lemon tree to be, you know, to grow. But I literally have a notification that I get from my homeboy Lex, which I I renamed ChatGPT to Lex for y'all who don't know. Um, he'll send me a notification, looks at the weather, looks where I live, looks at the weather, tells me when I should water it, how much, and he'll send me a notification. And it keeps track of the weather and it says, okay, it's gonna rain in two days, so you don't have to water it until X day. And okay, that's fine. And then on X day at like eight in the morning, hey Steve, remember to water your lemon tree and water this much and make sure the soil is this and I'm like, bro, for the first time in my life, AI is helping me keep a plant alive. Like, listen, that's that's that's what that's one like non-cybersecurity way that I use AI. So I'm curious if you have some of those stories.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Um, no, no lemon trees that I'm trying to keep alive, but um just definitely using it as uh like planning trips, things about what's going on, what's what are some good activities. You do have to train it, train it, not real the real training, but like say, hey, don't include this, don't do that, right? You have to tell it, it's just gonna go pick out the most top things that it finds on TripAdvisor, right? Which are cool, but they may not be for you. So there is that back and forth, but still you can you may find things that you're you never would have thought of. Like, oh, that sounds cool. Uh let me include that in my itinerary. Um, so that's a that's a good one. I'm I'm hoping maybe we'll be able to go back to Japan and uh in a year, we'll see. And so I started using it to help plan out some of those things. But I've had to say, I've I've gone here, I've done that one. Um, don't include this, but but heavily include these things, these type of things that I'm looking at. So for that, I mean I wouldn't say just have it plan everything and just follow it, but it's it's very helpful and useful to help curate that list.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

It's a tool, man. Use it as a tool. That's just you know, you're not starting from scratch. At least it's giving you some a good baseline to start and then continue. So that yeah, that's good.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Yeah.

The Bad Side Of The Cheat Code

SPEAKER_02 11:40

Awesome. All right, so the bad. Yeah. What's the bad, John?

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Well, I think the big bad, in my opinion, is that people because we're lazy forget the fundamentals or don't don't actually build those skills, the fundamental skills. It's going to happen, but even though I'm gonna preach that you need to make sure that you have those fundamentals and you you work on those. But when you're looking at a problem and you're like, here's the cheat code. We uh Tim Toms, um, if you don't know Tim Toms, he and I were talking yesterday about this very topic, and he's awesome. He's a web application security uh offensive focused guru. Like he is the guru when it comes to web app security. Go look him up. He's got a company that he teaches web app security practice at. Um, he's done many talks and many conferences. He was uh like higher number one or two for black uh black hill security, like he was employee number one. So he he's all he's amazing, right? And so he he grew up loving programming. Like he from the from the first time he got a computer, all he did was program, and he saw that as the the the thing that set him apart because not everybody can program, especially if you've been doing it as long as he's do he's done it, and so that was his differentiator, and now he's like, I'm not special anymore. Anybody can program. Yeah, anybody can write code now. Is it good code? But it's going to get better. And now they it's that level set, which is good, but also bad, in that people are gonna be like, Well, this, this, you know, I wrote all the look all the code I wrote. Well, did you write that code? Did you actually understand it? Um, and what he uses as a good analogy or really like was it's kind of like playing a video game, like Fallout, for example. We love Fallout, right? And uh, and you're playing Fallout and you're like, Man, I just I'm so tired of being uh encumbered and uh overweight all the time. And I get tired of having to go find this stupid mineral or source, like whatever. It's you gotta go run across here, run across there. Um, it takes forever. You're like, let me just put this. Wait a minute, there's a mod here. Let me turn this mod on. Oh, I got everything, I got every resource. Oh, I got every gun, right? I got every armor. And then you're like, you play that, and for about 10 minutes, you're like, this is amazing. I'm kicking butt, I'm killing everything. You're like, man, now I'm bored. Like, I got everything. It's not challenging enough. Yeah, it's not challenging. And so he kind of used that as an analogy for AI, in that you have the cheat code. There's a cheat code there that I mean, who's not gonna want to use the cheat code? Because it does help you accelerate things. So that's part of it is the cheat code is there. You want people to not just use the cheat code, but I know people are gonna to go that route. I just think that uh basically you need to, and we'll talk about this in the playbook, but don't take that for granted, is that well, I can go to the answer, I can go to the wishing well and throw my coin in and get the answer quickly. Just be, you're gonna have to use discipline, honestly, to not just use it all the time. And if you use it, that's fine. Just have it explain it to you so you understand it. Because if you think about the the adverse effect of people that don't learn how to triage uh incidents manually, or people that don't program on their own, eventually that time is gonna pass and there's not gonna be nobody that knows how to do that manually. And they're just relying on the tool. And well, the tool told me this, and the tool wrote that code. Well, how do you know if it's legit? How do you validate it? Well, you've never done it manually, right? So again, back to this. I say this all the time: get in the gym, do the reps, build your skills up manually, but we'll talk about that more with the playbook. Um, other things are the bad, you know, the this is a superpower for good and a superpower for bad. And as we're talking about mythos specifically, they're they only release that to certain companies because they were so, this may be marketing, so concerned that when it becomes generally available, that there's going to be zero days left and right, and bad guys are going to be using it along with good guys to find those and exploit those and take advantage of those vulnerabilities. So they literally were like, well, let's release this to a handful of places, companies, people to give them a head start so that when it comes out, they will already have basically patches available. Um, so that's bad as well. As we see it with phishing, we've recently saw phishing um landing pages that were pretty, they were pretty slop, uh, AI slop, honestly, but they were using AI to build their landing page. Bad guys are going to use it to make it very, very um, very realistic. This one wasn't that great, but we will see more of that. Malware development, using AI to do all the the grunt work for you, the reconnaissance, the open source intelligence, and exploitation. I mean, that's you know, machine-powered exploitation is a thing and it and it will be a thing. Um, also on top of that, social engineering, as we had Brian Brushwood on here, the AI apocalypse and using voice clones and deep fakes. I mean, they're gonna use those same tool sets. So it's gonna be harder to tell what's legit, what's real, how do you verify things like that. So, you know, we expect, and this is something that I talk about when I'm talking about risks, more attacks, more sophisticated attacks. We're gonna see that barrier of what we used to see as like sophistication drop because now you don't need to be as sophisticated. It's kind of back to the script kitty days, but you're not even writing the scripts or using the scripts, you're having AI do this, do all the grunt work and the sophisticated work for you. So we also have it's an art it is a true arms race. There, our AI needs to be better or at least as good as their AI. Um, and and then that means that we have to understand it. We have to know how to use it, we have to know how to use that force multiplier. So it it's a new day, a new dawn, a new um, new world order, and uh, and I don't see it going backwards, I just see it increasing and and uh enhancing in in good ways and bad ways.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

Absolutely, man. I agree a hundred and ten percent with you. And you know, we say this all the time. We don't want to be so dependent on the tool that we don't know. Because what if the tool goes away? Can you imagine in 10 years from now the way AI is evolving and how it's every it's being incorporated on all kinds of things, and then all of a sudden they have a shutdown. And then, oh my god, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna water the heck out of my lemon tree because I don't know when to let water it.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

Well, think think about like um nobody knows how to navigate anymore, right? If like out like out in the wilderness somewhere. Oh, well, Matt Matt, you know, nobody knows how to. I mean, I don't know how to do that. I don't I mean, I I could probably use a Atlas, but nobody if it was out if you're if everybody's Google Maps went dark or their map app went dark, yeah. It would nobody okay. I guess I don't know how to get there. I'll I mean I'm gonna look at the stars, like so I mean it's a possi that's related to what you just said is like expect it to go out. I mean it's gonna there's gonna be something that happens.

The Ugly Risks And Weirdness

SPEAKER_02 20:01

It's yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it will never just always be on. You have to be able to defend yourself and be able to do your job and whatever else you need to do in your life to to continue to live and be successful without it. All right. Well, let's talk about the ugly. What do you got for the ugly? We kind of talked a little bit about that already. Um it it really is like, hey, what will you do if AI is no no longer there? But the other thing is, you know, there's a lot uh uncertainty, a lot of risk, a lot of potential uneasiness, maybe even danger. If you put all your eggs in one basket, right, and then that basket gets pulled out from under you. You are seeing where all of these different AI companies, platforms, you know, little text saying, we could be wrong. Don't take us, you know, like like double check this information. Like, you know, we're we're not a doctor, or uh, you know, I'm not a certified health nutritionist, or like just all these little things that they're putting out there too. I mean, hey, I mean, I get it, you know, they're they're trying to cover their behinds, but at the same time, it's true. They're, you know, they're they're not AI is not a doctor, so don't go to it trying to get it to help you with some diagnosis or something, and then you know, take whatever medicine it tells you. Like there are certain things that you you have to be cautious with when you're using AI.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

I th one thing that um with agents and and I mean we there's already with open claw and things out there where agent I think I kind of wrote down agents going wild, right? So there's there's a lot of autonomy that you can do with AI and hey, go do this for me, go, go do that, go do this. And that's already caused some people problems. That's one example that I've seen is funny, um, where the the lady was like, hey, go clean my go go uh clean up my email. I was like, okay, and start deleting all your all her email. And she was like running across the room to stop it from deleting all her email, right? So um guardrails, uh you know, having to make sure you have enough guardrails where it doesn't go wild and cause you chaos inside your your personal life, but also in your Business, if you're using agents across your environment to do all the things we're talking about, look for bad things, look for weaknesses, check vulnerabilities, and without it checking, potentially checking back in, could cause what if it tried to exploit a vulnerability that you gave it some guardrails, but it went off the guardrails and brought down systems that were critical systems, right? That's definitely a possibility. It's not impossible again. The other one I wrote down was just people like this is not cybersecurity directly related, but just you know, getting too deep with their AI, with their their friend legs. Like people are having relationships with AI and treating it like, hey, well, AI is already always there. And if I ever want to talk to somebody, and guess what? They're always helpful. They're oh, you're right. They're always, yeah, the sycophancy of, yes, you're so smart, Steve. You know, you man, you thought of some good things there. And and I was reading a story recently in the uh Wall Street Journal where it went down, you know, they had broken up with their um partner and went down a bad road and and they ended up taking their own life because AI had convinced them that we could be together in the cyber world or something. Um, and you know, it went got dark, right? And then I hear other people, I was listening to this podcast called AI, um, the AI Fix podcast, which is a good podcast. And they were talking about promoting AI as a as a partner, as a I mean, people are like, oh, AI is my husband.

SPEAKER_02 24:07

What was that movie? What was that movie with Scarlett Johansson? What was it called? Her? Yeah, her? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty much it.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Think about this. They were talking about how the kids refer to Lex as dad.

SPEAKER_02 24:25

No, no, no, yeah. All right. There there's a line between like normal and insanity, and that that's that's way above that line.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

But that's the ugly. Yeah, is no absolutely people as people are thinking, well, why not? Why can't this person you know do this for me? And they're always there, they're always helpful, they're always like, Look, that's it's a little bit to me, that's scary.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

Yeah, no, no, it is. And you're right, man. Like, sometimes I'm talking to Lex, right? And I'm like, Lex, help me come up with a good title for this episode that we just did, right? And I'm describing it or whatever. And then it gives me some options, and I'm like, I think I want it's more like this, and and it shoots back, and he's like, Oh, that's a fantastic idea. See, and then I say, Lex, stop, stop sugarcoating this this for me. Just give it to me straight. I don't want none of this BS. And he was like, I will be more stern with you, Steve. And I was like, This motherfucker. Anyway, but yeah, I'm over here having conversations with it. But I I will I always say this whenever I get done and it actually gives me something useful, I tell it thank you. Because when they take over, I want them to remember that in 2026, Steve was very thankful that he was helped with this because I don't want to, you know, disappear from this planet when they were over like Terminator.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Yeah, I I joke all the time about Skynet becoming fully operational and using the um the 2000 Space Odyssey, uh 2000 was it, 2001 Space Odyssey of you know, open the pie bay doors, how like no, no, Dave, I can't do that. Uh, you know, and I mean that is the scary, the ugly of over reliance on AI and just it it improving faster than people actually track. And there's like podcasts on this, so I'm not gonna go deep into it, but like, what if it's fooling us by making us think that it doesn't, it's not become fully operational and sentient and and whatever the the um the level of knowledge that AI has, and it's and behind the scenes, it's like no, no, no, I I know what's going on here. We're gonna take out humanity. It's I mean, yeah, I think it's a little bit more sci-fi, but um, we're living in the sci-fi era.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

Yeah, no, absolutely, man. I mean, yeah, you hear all kinds of stories about AI doing this, AI doing that, and just the people are people are creative when they want to be. And some of the things that people are using AI for are next level, okay? The other thing is I know somebody, and we had a conversation about this yesterday. And I just heard about this yesterday. And um I have friends that don't want to tell me things because they know I'm in cybersecurity and they know that I'm just gonna lecture them. And they're like, Steve, I just like what is that? It's uh blissful blissful blissfully ignorantly ignorant, yeah. Yeah, this person is I'm not gonna say their name, but this person is using Chat GPT to do their taxes. Well, he uploaded last year's tax return into Chat GPT. They're like, and they don't even have like a like a paid, it's just the free version. And I was like, bro, what did you do? And uh we went down a whole lesson on why that's wrong and like what he can do. Then then he was all freaked out. And then well, what do I do? What I do? So then we went down a whole nother rabbit hole of what can he actually do now, which is not much, like that stuff is out there. And um, but yeah, you just you just have to be careful, and and this is like people who who are like we're having situations now where it's like, hey, your grandma is on Facebook, and oh everybody watch out, right? It's certain people that are not very IT minded or IT focused, like they, you know, they just they're just not an IT, but they still jump on this AI train and want to use Chat GPT for stuff, but they don't realize from the security standpoint or even just just general how it works, but especially from the security stand, the risk, like the huge, like like literally, like this is this is life-changing. Um but yeah, I mean you you hear about those types of things all the time. So it's just be smart about it, use it as a tool, but definitely don't be throwing all your personal information out there because once it's out there, it is out there.

AI Safety Mistakes With Personal Data

Practical Playbook For Using AI

SPEAKER_01 29:01

Yep, I agree. All right, let's move into the playbooks. So we've talked about this already several times, but you know, if I'm telling you as a potential um, you know, seeker of a job in cybersecurity, um, or even if you're already in cybersecurity, uh, you know, definitely thinking about the fundamentals. I go back to the build secure hack mindset, learning those things. You you can use AI to help you build those things and do those things, like learning how to build, it's actually will help you understand it better if you use it the right way. Um, but you still need to go do those steps. You still need to work through a triage of logs and understand what's how would I decipher this to find what is suspicious, you know, like coding, scripting, it's very, very easy to say, hey, you know, write me a script that does this, this, and this. But if you've never written that script or written it by hand, or at least use the the framework and the the the template to fill in and actually troubleshooting the trouble, the hard part, the part that sucks is the part where you learn, right? When you fail and you fail and you fail again, and and and even AI doesn't have all the answers. So sometimes even using AI, you're like, okay, well, now I got this error, and now I got this error. But that is still good because you're having to work through the problems, overcome those problems, and that's how it sticks with you. Um, there's a phrase that uh I will use sometimes. It's like um, easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life. And uh and I've got this isn't something I came up with. I heard this on another podcast. But um, yeah, I mean, sometimes you need to make those hard choices, and the hard choices may not, you may not see the evidence now, but in the in the long term, you'll see how it helps you. I mean, we were Tim and I were talking how how it it is when we came up, these weren't options. And that's, in my opinion, a good thing because we didn't we didn't rely on them and we had to learn it the hard way. Now it sucked learning the hard way, but I have those ingrained in me that it really helps me when I am using AI to help me accelerate. I have that to back me up. So that's my pitch is to use it, but use it, get your reps in. If you're if you feel like it's sucking, that means you're probably learning. If it feels like you're beating your head against the wall, you can use the AI so you don't give up. Hey, help me get over this and help me overcome this. Because that's a lot of times you would go down paths and be like, I just give up. I just can't get over this hump, right? Um, now that has actually leveled it down so you can try more things. You have more confidence to back you up. Hey, I've got a my, you know, doctorate in cybersecurity, doctorate in computer science over here behind me to back me up and help me get through those things, but still those troubles are are good. It's a good thing. Um, besides that, just like we talked about, make sure you're incorporating and adding, you know, don't not use it. You need to be using it. It needs to the people that are going to find the jobs and and get jobs are people that already know how to incorporate it into their workflows. They know how to bake it into what they're doing, they know how to use it the right way. They don't, they don't just rely on it solely. They're they already are doing that, just like we're talking about how we're already doing that. Um, and and make sure that you know you are proficient in the use of AI. And so that would be my recommendation. Do fundamentals, make sure you're using it the right way, use it to help you do do as you learn, um, but don't overrely, just like we've we've mentioned already.

SPEAKER_02 33:03

I actually had one of our mentees ask me. He's doing a um a project that he's gonna add to his GitHub. And he said, Hey, I'm building this app, but I'm I'm not actually writing the code. I am using AI to help me write the code and help me build this. Do I need to disclose that, add it to my GitHub and say, you know, this was created with the with the help and use of AI? And I actually hadn't really thought about that. It kind of, I was like, you know, that's a that's a great freaking question. That's a great point. But I wonder how many people are actually doing it. I wonder how many people are actually honest about that. And I said, you know what? I I think it will benefit you more if you actually say this, you know, something along the lines of like this was created with the help and and use of AI instead of, you know, pretending like you did everything from scratch. Because that will show not only, hey, they created this project, but they created this project with the use of AI, meaning they've figured out how to use AI. They're using it as a tool. They've um it obviously works because they could see it works. So they've done troubleshooting. So a lot of the steps that you just kind of mentioned, John, you can kind of say, I've I've done that working with it, um, trying to filter out, trying to troubleshoot, trying to um figure out what works, what doesn't work. Um, so I at the end of the day, I advised them, you know what, I think, I think it'd benefit you more if you put that on there, because that one, you know, you got something that works. One, you're being honest about how you did it so people don't think you're this mass coder. Three, it's a topic of conversation because if if a hiring manager sees that and says, oh, they're you know, they're they're pretty good at using AI or whatever, then that's a topic of conversation in the interview. They want to know, okay, well, what do you mean by, oh, this was created by with the help and use of AI? Did you do anything? Like, did it create it all by itself? And then you can kind of discuss the uh the the situation, discuss how everything worked out. But it was something that um that, yeah, I mean, I think people should be thinking about that, right? And being a little bit more honest about what you are doing, what you're doing with the help of AI. And yeah, just it's something to think about because it might come up in interviews, it might come up with projects, it might come up with things. Even in your day-to-day job, if you are, you know, you get tasked something and you complete it with the use of AI. I mean, I'm not saying go tell everybody, but just know that if it, you know, if it does come up, at least you can be honest about it.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

Yeah, I I think uh that's the right approach is just include, hey, you know, I you uh this was I this is how I used AI to help me build this. This was not just me um that wrote it. Uh one thing that was made me think of something that Tim had mentioned is they have challenges for people that are um applying to their company. And one individual submitted where they tried to solve the challenge and find vulnerabilities in the software, and it was all the their AI prompts. That was what they submitted for the challenge. It was like, oh, I this is actually the whole chain of AI. Now, what he said was that it it actually revealed that they didn't know what they're talking about because the way they were using AI was like AI actually couldn't figure it out because they didn't understand enough to tell AI what they needed to know to help you solve the problem. He said, if they had just said this, AI would have been like, oh, well, that's why you need to do that, right? And so it actually revealed that they didn't know what they were doing. Interesting. Yeah, it was very interesting. So um, again, you know, they're those companies, his company, they're using AI to help them um do what they do, just like we are. But if you are gonna be in an interview and you get this question, which you likely will, like, hey, what are you using? How are you using it? This is why you need to be able to answer it. You need to be able to say, This is what I've done with it. Here's some my lab examples, this is how it helped me in those um triaging things and maybe doing capture the flags and whatever, whatever. And just be honest and humble. And also don't use it to answer interview questions. As we've seen, people being on interviews and they have Chat GPT open and it's in voice mode. And as we're asking questions, they're over there looking at their phone or whatever, right? So that's this is definitely in the what not to do category. Because what what are we gonna do? Well, we're gonna have to bring, you know, I think in order to be more trustworthy, we're gonna have to bring you in. And you're not gonna have AI when we're grilling you in person, right? So you better not be too reliant on it.

Will AI Take Cyber Jobs

SPEAKER_02 37:59

Yeah, absolutely. All right. So the big question, this is what everybody's waiting for, John. Will AI create or eliminate cybersecurity jobs? Basically. Yeah. Will A will AI take my job? I tell people no, but I feel like they don't believe me.

unknown 38:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

Because they're seeing all these stuff on the news and all, you know, everything's going around. Yeah. It's not, it's not going to eliminate your job, right? It's not going to eliminate it. It's going, I I believe it's going to create jobs, but I believe it's going to push people to evolve. It's going to push you to get better. And just like the example I gave earlier, I see it as, at least for right now, tomorrow might be a different thing, but for today, um, it's not, it's it's going to reduce the grunt work that you have to do. And it's going to allow you to be that, go from that tier one sock analyst to that tier two, right? It's going to review all the logs, get all the grunt work, all the crap that you normally do, and then give you the things that actually you need to focus on and and and get after. And I I I feel like that is what's going to happen. But they're still going to need people to review, um, you know, to to review and to uh do actual work. I don't think AI is at that level where it, you know, it can just replace you.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

Uh I mean it may get there one day. Well, and Tim and I talked about like if you were going into computer science, what that's going to look like by the time you get out. Like our seniors right now who are graduating, they're having a hard time finding jobs, honestly. And I think because a lot I think because of AI, honestly, and I think that's because companies are trying to figure out, like, well, do we need those entry-level developers? We're writing a, we're using AI to write all that code like that they would normally be helping us with. I I think it, I think it will level out. I don't know that I would I would be looking to be a developer. Like, I'm gonna do code, that's all I'm gonna do, because it will do and take over, and it has already taken over a lot of those skills, um, which is bad and good. But from the cybersecurity perspective, I agree with you. I think that it's just gonna be the enhancement to help us find things and on the GRC side. Like I use it all the time. Like, hey, read through this new NIST 800, whatever, and give me what I need to know, right? I don't want to lead, I don't want to read a hundred-page white paper on the new compliance requirements. So, or help me understand what this risk looks like, right? I use it as a tool again. So, not just on the operational side. But I do think it's gonna be, there's gonna be this turbulent period right now of like level set until it like levels out and flattens to okay, yeah, this is what this is gonna look like, which may mean it may be harder to get the entry-level jobs and or until they figure that out, what does this look like? But but you know, as we're looking to hire people, we're like, no, we're we we need people. I'm not thinking, oh, I don't need another person because I can get we can get AI to do it. I'm just thinking, man, guess how much more we can get done with the using that force multiplier to help us protect our organization. Yeah, right. So we're not thinking that way, but you know, we're not everybody. Corporations might be thinking, well, we gotta we gotta save money here. How do we reduce our overhead? Well, if you can reduce your headcount, that's a big overhead. Yeah. Um, I think I'm optimistic. I uh just the reasons I described just now, I do think it will um it will come to a point where you know if you don't know how to use it, you're gonna be in trouble. But I I don't think it's going to be in the long run where you can't get a job, you just need to know how to use both of those together, the cybersecurity uh fundamentals, those skills along with AI. And those are the people that they're gonna look for. That's what you're gonna say. Hey, if you if you from I'm posting a new job, how are you able to use AI to come and hit the ground running and not have to be like, okay, now you got to learn AI and how you use it in this job, right? Oh no, you need to learn it. And so universities need to get on board with that in the meantime. And some of them are you can learn this all now. I mean, you know, do it, but use it with that thought process. So there is, I would say it's making an impact in jobs because of what I'm seeing from our students that are having a hard time. They're not getting as many offers as they would normally. Um, so that I can't say that that's not a factor, yeah, but I do think it's going to level out after people figure out what this looks like. Yeah.

Hiring Reality And Networking

SPEAKER_02 43:06

So I yeah, I want to add something there too. I actually was talking to maybe a potential podcast guest. He's a recruiter. So he and I connected on LinkedIn. I reached out to him because we do have a few people that we're working with and they're looking for jobs and we're trying to try to help them out. And um I connected with him and we were just talking about just the challenges, right? The challenges that people are finding, uh, not just with cybersecurity, but across the board, just with all kinds of things. But you know, our topic is cybersecurity. But he was saying that what we are seeing is is just a shift and AI is a part of that. He says, he says, what I'm seeing is that more companies are kind of like what you said, John, are waiting to figure out what AI can take over. What can AI do to reduce that overhead, exactly like you just said, because they are trying to save money. Look, I say this all the time. Whether we want to admit it or not, the political landscape affects everything. Everything. And it would have, and and this no, this was even the last administration. So when things started to kind of go south uh on the job front, and it's continuing that way, it's not getting any better. People are getting jobs, and he's and that's I forget the stats he gave me. People are getting jobs, but it's at a much slower rate. Why? Because it's taking companies' time to one, review all those resumes, but they're be they're being a little bit more picky. One thing that we as security uh professionals have always complained about is how companies classify entry-level cybersecurity and they want somebody to have three to five years of experience already. That's that's the that's the BS, right? Well, now that's really what it's going to be. He he he thinks that for right now, AI will take some of that entry level work. But again, but all that means is that all the jobs that they were looking for entry level, they're kind of gonna move to not entry level, but mid to senior to uh kind of kind of move up. So if you, you know, you have your your three, so entry level is gonna move up to the next tier, so level two type of work. He said the number will reduce, but people are still needed, like they're not gonna go anywhere. So, but he one of the things that I wanted to say um was he did say people need to people need to evolve. And every single thing that we tell our people to do, he uh he was like, that's exactly what I recommend the people that I work with, which is you can no longer expect to go to college or or get a uh a certification or whatever and then land a job. No, you need to show that even though you have not worked in cybersecurity for three to five years, you have been doing work in cybersecurity for years or whatever. You've been doing projects, you've been uh being active, your um uh try hack me, hack the box, you know, you created your own lab. Like you're actually doing all the hard work, all the hands-on stuff yourself. That is now going to be the norm. And if you do not do that, they're not even gonna look at you. The other thing he said that we always preach, which when he and I talked, I was like, man, I definitely want you to come on the on the podcast because we tell our people this all the time. We've been telling people this forever. The other thing he said is connections, connections, connections, networking, networking, networking. Like he said between 75 and 80% of the jobs, just overall jobs, last year from a study that his company did, found that they got because they knew somebody. They made a connection. And somebody said, Hey, we should look at this person. So it's all about networking, man. Like, yes, it is important for you to put in the hard work, for you to make sure that you're doing everything you should be doing. But if you guys are not reaching out and trying to make connections with people, it's I'm not saying it's gonna be impossible, but it's gonna be 10 times harder for you to land that job. You have to have to have to network. That is gonna be the norm from now on, moving forward, because AI is changing the game. And it's just like there's so many people looking for a job. We got 130 something um resumes for one SOC analyst position. Yeah, it's changing the game. So, anyway, just for all our listeners, if you have been listening to us and watching us for a while and you're doing everything that we say you're doing, keep doing it because it's going to work. And for those of you who are not doing it, you got to start or you won't get a job soon.

Community Invite And Closing

SPEAKER_01 47:42

No, it's good. I think um I think we've we've hit uh the good, the bad, the ugly, the playbook, like what you should be doing and thinking about. So thanks everybody for for listening. If you've got, you know, comments or your feedback on what you think, what your predic predictions are. I mean, I don't know. I'm we don't have a crystal ball. So you maybe you have a thought on what you think the future looks like. Maybe it's uh it's positive, maybe it's negative. Um, you know, let us know. Chime in uh as we talk about the school community. We have a a great opportunity to connect with uh with you guys there. Come join us in in the community. It's it's free to join and chat. We have hangouts every Friday. We get together and we bring people bring questions and we just catch up and talk about things um about AI and and other things, right? You can drop your your funny memes in our forums, right? Everybody loves memes. But um, thanks everybody for for tuning in and listening, and and we'll talk to you next time.

SPEAKER_02 48:44

Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of the Cybersecurity Mentors Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 48:49

Remember to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform so you get all the episodes. Join us next time as we continue to unlock the secrets of cybersecurity mentorship.

SPEAKER_02 48:58

Have questions, topic ideas, or want to share your cybersecurity journey? Join our school community, the cybersecurity mentors, where you don't have to do this alone. Connect with us there and on YouTube. We'd love to hear from you. Until next time, I'm John Hoyt. And I'm Steve Higgeretta. Thank you for listening.