Episode
Killing the Playbook with Agentic AI with Allan Alford and Tom Findling
- Podcast
- Hacker Valley Studio
- Published
- Apr 24, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2369
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Summary
SOAR promised to close the loop in the SOC and fell flat. Agentic AI is finally delivering what a decade of playbooks couldn’t. In this episode, Ron sits down with Allan Alford, SVP at NTT Global Data Centers, and Tom Findling, co-founder and CEO of Conifers.ai. They cover why static playbooks broke under real-world conditions and how agentic systems are flipping the SOC operating model. They get into hallucination guardrails, human-on-the-loop versus human-in-the-loop, and the QR-code phishing investigation an agent solved on its own without being told how. The conversation closes on trust thresholds, the speed of enterprise adoption, and Allan's blunt warning to any CISO trying to slow this train down… you're already on the tracks. Impactful Moments00:00 - Intro02:30 - Why the lazy sysadmin always wins05:15 - Why SOAR fell flat08:00 - Guardrails, hallucinations, and showing the work13:00 - The SOC AI holy grail15:30 - The moment you start saying we17:30 - QR-code phishing the agent solved alone19:00 - Why playbooks were never going to scale28:00 - Earning trust at enterprise scale33:30 - Stand in front of this revolution and lose35:40 - Risk quantification on business steroids LinksConnect with our guest, Tom Findling, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomfindling/ Learn more about Conifers.ai at https://www.conifers.ai Connect with our guest, Allan Alford, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allanalford/ ___Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams Love Hacker Valley Studio? Pick up some swag: https://store.hackervalley.com Become a sponsor of the show to amplify your brand: https://hackervalley.com/work-with-us/