The Defender's Advantage Podcast

Host Luke McNamara is joined by Jake Nicastro, who leads the AI function for the Frontline Intelligence Operations team within the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG). Jake details how his team is shifting from simple prompt engineering to more advanced agentic workflows, focusing on a model of "human-machine teaming." He shares practical use cases for AI in CTI—including automated script decoding, hunting query creation, and streamlining repetitive metadata-labeling tasks. Jake also discusses the concept of "judge agents" for quality control, the implementation of structured analytic techniques, and how real-time AI assistants can accelerate on-boarding and domain transitions for frontline threat analysts.

Host Luke McNamara is joined by Charley Snyder, Head of Disruption Operations at Google Threat Intelligence Group, to delve into how Google is crafting a more coordinate approach to disrupting adversary cyber operations. Charley describes how this disruption focus is not hacking back, how it builds on existing work across Google security teams, and some of the recent wins such as the IPIDEA and GRIDTIDE takedowns.

Host Luke McNamara is joined by Chris Linklater, Practice Leader at Mandiant, to discuss the 2026 edition of Mandiant's M-Trends Report. Chris dives into the latest trends observed in breached throughout 2025 and into this year, noting some of the key aspects organizations should focus on in applying these insights into today's threat landscape. 
https://cloud.google.com/security/resources/m-trends

In this episode of the Defenders Advantage Podcast, host Luke McNamara sits down with Google Threat Intelligence experts Jose Nazario and Brandon Wood. They dive into the rollout of new dark web and underground monitoring capabilities, explaining how AI is fundamentally changing the way defenders track adversaries.

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/bringing-dark-web-intelligence-into-the-ai-era\

Host Luke McNamara is joined by Eugene Liderman, Senior Director in Android's Security and Privacy Group, to discuss the evolving world of mobile-targeting scams. Eugene details some of the unique aspects to mobile scams, regional variations in tactics by scammers, and the steps Android has taken to combat this problem.