Michael Farnum, CEO of Cybersec Community, traces 30 years in cybersecurity from Desert Storm to building Houston's largest security conference. He breaks down workforce gaps, critical infrastructure blind spots, and why radical transparency is the industry's greatest defense.
What does a tank crew, a water treatment plant, and an AI-powered analyst have in common? They're all only as strong as the humans accountable for them — and Michael Farnum has spent 30 years proving that community is what holds all three together.
In this episode:
• Why the military instilled the discipline Michael needed — and why he had to unlearn how to apply it when leading civilian teams
• The real workforce problem in cybersecurity: it's not the number of unfilled jobs, it's that AI is quietly erasing the entry-level roles new practitioners depend on to break in
• Critical infrastructure blind spots most industries ignore — including the underfunded water utilities that foreign adversaries are actively targeting right now
• How cybersecurity's culture of radical transparency — sharing threat intelligence openly — is a model every industry, including localization, should study
Michael Farnum is the CEO and co-founder of Cybersec Community, the organization behind CybersecCon, OT SecCon, and CyberHackCon. He has been in information technology and cybersecurity since 1994, founded the nonprofit HouSecCon conference in 2010, and has grown it into an annual event drawing more than 3,000 practitioners. Through the nonprofit arm Cybersec Careers, he leads mentorship, scholarships, and youth programming designed to bring the next generation into the field.
Connect with Michael Farnum:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelfarnum
Website: https://cybrsec.community
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