#231: Texas A&M & Axonius - The Security Risk Living Between Your Tools

Episode Summary

In this episode, Adam Mikeal, CISO at Texas A&M University, and Tim Paikoff from Axonius break down how consolidating fragmented security data into a single view changed the way A&M tracks assets, validates policy, and tells cybersecurity's ROI story to leadership — and why AI's data access model is now keeping CISOs up at night.

Featuring

Adam Mikeal is Chief Information Security Officer at Texas A&M University - responsible for securing the university's full asset environment, with an unconventional path through history, classics, and computer-human interaction before landing in cybersecurity leadership.

Tim Paikoff runs the SLED team at Axonius - building the State, Local, and Education practice from a two-person team to a full sales, SC, BDR, and marketing operation over four years.

Timestamps

(1:38) Adam's unconventional path - from history and classics to Chief Information Security Officer(4:00) The data problem - why the right question can't be answered from inside a single security tool(5:00) The spaces between - why Axonius can see what individual tools never could(7:00) Higher ed's unique exposure - student device sprawl and the identity lifecycle nightmare(10:00) Texas A&M's four core security metrics - patching, vulnerability remediation, inventory accuracy, agent health(14:00) Intel chip vulnerability response - how having data at your fingertips changes incident speed(15:00) Active directory migrations in real time - watching two lines cross on a chart(17:00) The Log4j gap - 194 instances still in production seven months after "cleanup"(22:00) AI and the new front line - why prompt injection is the threat no contract can fix

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