The Defender's Journal

Welcome to Episode 34 of The Defender’s Journal!
This week, George Totev joins us - a CISO who has spent over 20 years operating at the intersection of regulation, product and real-world risk, building and scaling security and compliance functions across organisations like Goldman Sachs, Visa and Atlassian...
In this episode, we explore how security leaders should think about trade-offs at scale - from balancing prevention vs reaction, to understanding diminishing returns in security investment, and why incident management is ultimately the last line of defence. George also touches on how to communicate risk effectively to boards - not through theory, but through cost, consequence and real-world impact.
+ Interested in joining us on the show? Connect with Cameron Wenham on LinkedIn or via our website.

Welcome to another crossover episode of The Defender’s Journal.
Today’s guest is Abhi Sharma, co-founder and CEO of Relyance AI - a company rethinking how organisations secure data in the age of AI. Rather than treating data as something static, his team is building an AI-native approach to privacy, governance and security that focuses on the movement of data itself.
In this episode, we explore how Abhi’s early experiences shaped his leadership philosophy, why “unreasonable hospitality” has become a defining cultural pillar at Relyance AI, and what many organisations still misunderstand about building trust in AI-driven systems…
+ Want to be part of the journey? Connect with host Cameron Wenham or explore both shows via our website!

Welcome to Episode 33 of The Defender’s Journal.
This week, Sandeep Poonen joins us. From establishing VMware’s cloud security and enterprise cyber risk functions from the ground up to leading global compliance, fraud risk platforms and board-level cyber strategy, his career spans scale, regulation and high-stakes accountability...
In this episode, we explore what was forged early in his journey - moving countries at 17 and building under pressure - and how that shaped his philosophy on integrity, resilience and leadership. We unpack what it really means to “bowl the last over,” why preparation matters more than bravado, and how trust is built not through perfection, but through accountability.
+ Interested in joining us on the show? Connect with Cameron Wenham on LinkedIn or via our website.

Welcome to Episode 32 of The Defender’s Journal.
Jacob DePriest returns to the show - previously Deputy CISO at GitHub, and now holding a rare dual mandate as CISO and CIO at 1Password, operating at the fault line between security, infrastructure, and business strategy.
In this conversation, Jacob unpacks what truly changes when you move from a deputy role into full ownership, why “customer zero” shifts the identity of a security leader, and the advice he gives to anyone early in their career: don’t default to the way things have always been done - push, test, and challenge the assumptions that everyone else has learnt to live with.
+ Interested in joining us on the show? Connect with either Jeff Harrod or Cameron Wenham on LinkedIn or via our website.

Welcome to a special crossover episode between ‘The Defender’s Journal’ and our new sister series focussed on ‘The Disruptors’ where we shift the lens from what needs defending to what we’re building next...
Our guest is Harry Wetherald - a founder with one foot in venture capital, the other in technical scale. As co-founder and CEO of Maze, he’s raised over $30 million and is reimagining vulnerability management through an AI-native lens - building systems that anticipate, recommend, and act, rather than wait for direction.
We dig into the mindset behind Maze’s mission, and explore what marketing in cyber gets wrong, what AI-native actually means in practice, and why clarity is a more powerful moat than complexity!
+ Want to be part of the journey? Connect with host Cameron Wenham or explore both shows via our website!