Podcast Summary: CyberWire Daily – “Pentesting at the Speed of Thought” [CyberWire-X]

Date: January 19, 2026
Host: Dave Bittner (N2K Networks)
Guest: Snehal Antani, Co-founder & CEO, Horizon3.ai

Episode Overview

This episode explores the limitations of current vulnerability management practices and advocates for a shift towards continuous, autonomous penetration testing powered by AI. Through the lens of Snehal Antani’s personal experiences as a CIO, CTO, and Department of Defense cyber leader, the conversation examines how organizations can move beyond theoretical vulnerabilities to prioritize and address risks that genuinely endanger their systems. Antani shares both technical and philosophical insights on why and how automated pen testing (including AI-driven “hackers”) is transforming security validation.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The "Fire Hose" Problem in Vulnerability Management

• Vulnerability Scanners: Too Much Noise
  • Traditional tools flood defenders with alerts, labeling everything as “critical.”
  • Real-world consequence: Teams lack capacity to patch all issues and have to make difficult, often arbitrary, decisions about which vulnerabilities to prioritize.
• Quote:
  • “When everything is labeled critical, nothing really is.” — Dave Bittner [00:26]

Personal Impact as a CIO

• Snehal describes the emotional and organizational burden of asking staff to sacrifice personal time for patches that “weren’t even exploitable or relevant to the attacker” [02:08].
• Quote:
  • “The hardest part of the job was deciding what not to fix. The second hardest part… was telling people to fix stuff I knew weren't even exploitable.” — Snehal Antani [02:38]
• This struggle led to his mantra: Fiercely prioritize problems that matter.

Communicating Risk to Executives & Boards

• Challenge: Boards often expect all vulnerabilities to be patched.
• Strategy: Move beyond patching to deploy compensating controls, limit blast radius, and demonstrate the real business consequence of not fixing a vulnerability.
• Example:
  • Instead of generalizing (e.g., “ransomware risk”), tie vulnerabilities to specific threats and direct impact: “This… is known to be abused by Salt Typhoon and will enable the attacker to… steal or interdict financial payments.” [04:28]

Continuous Pen Testing: Genesis & Value

• Realization: Traditional periodic pen tests or waiting for breaches leaves a constant “unknown” about true security posture.
• Antani felt the need to “continuously show” security, especially as environments and attacker tactics change rapidly.
• JSOC Commander’s Challenge:
  • “Don’t tell me we’re secure. Show me and then show me again tomorrow and then show me again next week.” — Snehal Antani, quoting his experience [07:21]

Pen Tests vs. Vulnerability Scans

• Scanners: Isolated, machine-level, lack attacker context, don’t account for compensating controls or chaining of exploits.
• Penetration Testing: Adopts the attacker’s perspective, demonstrates chainable risks, and surface what can actually be exploited.
• Key Quote:
  • “In cybersecurity, the only perspective that matters is the attacker’s. Penetration testing is the only way to get that attacker's perspective of your environment.” — Snehal Antani [09:47]

Cultural & Technical Hurdles: Compliance Mindset vs. Cyber Resilience

• Antani uses a simple question to diagnose organizational mindset:
  • “With an unlimited budget, how many pen tests would you run a year?”
    • “1–2” signals compliance (checkbox) mentality
    • “4 or more” signals a focus on resilience and proactive defense [10:44]
• Notable Point:
  • “The goal of running a pen test is not to find problems, it is to quickly fix problems that matter.” [11:03]

The Dawn of AI Hackers and Automation

• Inspired from a young age by hacker culture and movies—envisioned “point, click, shoot” hacking.
• Technical Explanation:
  • Opening and closing moves in pen testing can be automated (akin to chess), but the dynamic “middle game” requires advanced AI, including ML, LLMs, and reinforcement learning, to select the “next best action” [14:17].
• Quote:
  • “A good technical architect always understands the problem and tries to use the right tool for the job versus over rotating towards chasing the next technology trend.” — Snehal Antani [16:24]

Case Study: Autonomous Pen Test Finds the “Needle in a Haystack”

• Situation: 14,000 endpoints, all with Windows Defender. One agent was misconfigured.
• NodeZero (AI pen tester) exploited this single weakness, escalated privileges, and achieved domain admin—an outcome traditional methods would almost certainly miss due to scope or resources [17:26].
• Lesson:
  • “You can't trust that your security tools are working. You have to verify… using autonomous pen testing.” — Snehal Antani [18:22]
• Host Reaction:
  • “It’s a literal needle in a haystack.” — Dave Bittner [19:09]

Humans vs. Machines: Future of Red Teams and Audits

• Prediction: Humans and AI will coexist, but focus shifts:
  • AI excels: Network/infrastructure pen testing (graph analytics problems), automated source code analysis (LLMs for static analysis).
  • Humans excel: Discovery of logic flaws in custom code, OT/ICS testing (specialized expertise).
• Quote:
  • “Attackers think in graphs, defenders think in lists. That is absolutely true for network penetration testing…” [19:48]
  • “Humans should really be working on things that'll put them on stage at DEF CON and let AI take care of the rest.” — Snehal Antani [22:20]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [02:38] Snehal Antani: “The hardest part of the job was deciding what not to fix. The second hardest part was telling people to fix stuff I knew weren't even exploitable.”
• [04:28] Snehal Antani: “Don’t just tell me I’ve got ransomware risk. Tell me that this vulnerability is exploitable, known to be abused by [attackers], and will enable the attacker to [harm] the business.”
• [07:21] Snehal Antani: “Don’t tell me we’re secure. Show me, and then show me again tomorrow, and then show me again next week.”
• [09:47] Snehal Antani: “The only perspective that matters is the attacker's… penetration testing is the only way.”
• [11:03] Snehal Antani: “The goal of running a pen test is not to find problems, it is to quickly fix problems that matter.”
• [14:17] Snehal Antani: “Pen testing is actually very similar [to chess]… there are well-defined opening moves… The middle… is where a blend of machine learning, reinforcement learning, [and] LLMs… become very important.”
• [18:22] Snehal Antani: “You can't trust that your security tools are working. You have to verify that they're delivering the defenses you expected… using autonomous pen testing.”
• [19:48] Snehal Antani: “Attackers think in graphs, defenders think in lists.”
• [22:20] Snehal Antani: “Humans should really be working on things that'll put them on stage at DEF CON and let AI take care of the rest.”

Segment Timestamps

• [00:26] The “noise” problem with vulnerability management
• [01:43] Snehal Antani intro and personal journey
• [03:44] Communicating prioritization to boards/executives
• [06:02] When & why continuous pen testing became vital
• [08:17] Pen testing vs. vulnerability scanning (key differences)
• [10:36] Technical and cultural barriers to continuous pen testing
• [12:39] Inspiration for founding Horizon3.ai and building AI hackers
• [14:17] Technical breakdown: How AI-driven pen testing operates
• [17:26] Case study: AI pen test uncovering a hidden weakness
• [19:26] Future landscape: Humans and AI in cybersecurity testing

Conclusion

Snehal Antani makes the case that pen testing is not just about uncovering problems but about focusing on those weaknesses that can be exploited in the real world—and fixing them quickly. His approach advocates transcending compliance-driven “checkbox” security and moving towards evidence-based cyber resilience. AI-driven, autonomous pen testing enables organizations to continuously challenge their defenses and adapt to a threat landscape that changes as quickly as their own infrastructure. Meanwhile, human experts will remain essential for complex, creative testing that machines can’t yet replicate.

For listeners and security leaders alike, this episode offers a pragmatic, forward-looking framework for evolving vulnerability management and incident response, highlighting the power of attacker-centric testing and AI-augmented defenses.