In this episode of Modern Cyber, Jeremy sits down with Kenneth Ellington, founder of Ellington Cyber Academy, to explore the rapidly evolving landscape of SIEM engineering, threat hunting, and automated incident response.

As organizations transition from conceptual AI to deploying agentic AI in production environments, Kenneth shares his extensive hands-on expertise managing complex enterprise security operations across Splunk, Elastic, and Microsoft Sentinel architectures.

The conversation dives deep into the realities of alert fatigue, explaining why security analysts remain overwhelmed by false positives and how proper data pipeline management is essential before any AI automation can be effectively introduced. Kenneth unpacks the historical shift from SIEMs acting as long-term historical audit records to highly optimized, real-time threat detection engines, while advocating for cost-effective security data lakes for extended threat hunting visibility.

Then, the discussion tackles the nuances of implementing AI in highly regulated sectors like finance and healthcare, demystifying the difference between marketing buzzwords around SOAR platforms and genuinely actionable AI-assisted threat hunting workflows. Wrapping up, Kenneth shares raw insights into the harsh realities of breaking into the cybersecurity industry today, emphasizing the indispensable need for hard technical skills, strong soft skills, and resilient mental models for aspiring SOC analysts facing trial by fire.

About Kenneth

Kenneth Ellington is a Senior SIEM Engineer and cybersecurity entrepreneur, and the Founder of Ellington Cyber Academy (ECA), where he trains the next generation of detection engineers and threat hunters. He previously served as a Senior Consultant at EY, supporting enterprise security operations and SIEM engineering initiatives across complex environments. Kenneth specializes in detection engineering, threat hunting, and XDR architecture, with deep hands-on experience across Splunk, Elastic, and Sentinel ecosystems. He recently spoke at BSides St. Pete, sharing insights on real-world threat detection and building practical cyber talent pipelines.

Episode Links

Ellington Cyber Academy: https://www.ellingtoncyberacademy.com/
Kenneth Ellington on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-ellington/