49 - How AI Can Hand Attackers the Keys to Your Cloud with Cody Pierce & Mark St John

In this episode, we sit down with two cybersecurity veterans from Neon Cyber: Mark St John, who's been in the trenches since the dial-up era, and Cody Pierce, an offensive security specialist who's spent the last decade chasing emerging threats. Together they unpack the most pressing threats hitting cloud environments right now — from AI-powered phishing campaigns so convincing they fool trained security teams, to credential and token-based attacks that bypass encryption entirely by just walking in the front door. Mark and Cody break down why speed is the defining asymmetry in today's threat landscape, how attackers are weaponizing AI to automate exploit development and brand impersonation at scale, and why the shift to SaaS and Microsoft 365 has quietly handed adversaries a new master key to corporate data. They also get practical — sharing frameworks for IT leaders at mid-market and enterprise organizations who are trying to build a security strategy without unlimited resources, starting with the foundational work most teams skip: true visibility into your attack surface.