The Third Wave - Ali Waezzadah - Watters Edge - Episode #10

What happens when the adversary moves faster than your people ever could? Ali Waezzadah and John Watters trace the three waves of cybersecurity, from the days of hardening networks and firewalls, to the golden age of intelligence-led security, to today’s race against AI-enabled attackers. Along the way, Ali shares what it felt like to run security in the shadow of the Pentagon after 9/11, how a 12-hour warning about the Sony hack let an entire executive team get ahead of the storm, and why a company’s best defense is knowing what is actually being targeted. They dig into the broken math of a 92-day gap between a threat signal and a response, and why every process, tool, and dollar deserves a hard second look. If you have ever answered “because that’s how we’ve always done it,” this one is for you.
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Ali Waezzadah is the Global CISO at iCOUNTER, and he has spent three decades building security programs where the stakes are highest. He took the keys to his first security role at the onset of 9/11 and went on to lead security at Kroll, CBS, and Frontier Communications, where he helped steer the company through a turnaround and its merger with Verizon. Ali is the rare leader who skips the safe path, chasing the problems no one else wants and building the road for everyone who follows.

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