> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.cybrsecmedia.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # CYBR.SEC.CON 2026 Keynotes Tackle AI, Cyberwar and Burnout - URL: https://www.cybrsecmedia.com/cybr-sec-con-2026-keynotes-tackle-ai-cyberwar-and-burnout/ - Published: 2026-08-18T15:41:45.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-18T15:50:17.000Z - Description: CYBR.SEC.CON 2026 keynotes from Winn Schwartau, Andy Ellis, Ann Delenela and Joe Marshall will tackle AI, cyberwar, critical infrastructure, leadership and burnout. - Author: Bill Brenner - Tags: CYBR.SEC.CON, Article, AI Security, cyberwarfare, Burnout Cybersecurity has accumulated plenty of new technology since [Winn Schwartau ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/winnschwartau/?ref=cybrsecmedia.com)began warning about information warfare decades ago. The harder problems haven't disappeared with it. At CYBR.SEC.CON 2026, four keynotes will examine what happens when rapidly changing technology collides with human decision-making, leadership, critical infrastructure and the people responsible for defending it. Each will arrive at those questions from very different places. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ab/67/ab676516-71e3-473d-8f73-9e0692f5aaee/content/images/2026/08/8cb32cd0-470d-4c1e-89b9-282918a2a153-2.png) **More on CYBR.SEC.CON:** [CYBR.SEC.CON 2026 Adds AI.SEC.CON Cybersecurity TrackCYBR.SEC.CON 2026 expands to 10 cybersecurity tracks with the debut of AI.SEC.CON, reflecting record AI submissions and AI’s growing impact across security.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ab/67/ab676516-71e3-473d-8f73-9e0692f5aaee/content/images/icon/CYBR.SEC.Media-Logo-copy-9de5f9dd-4518-428b-9627-8e057b83df96.jpg)CYBR.SEC.MediaBill Brenner![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ab/67/ab676516-71e3-473d-8f73-9e0692f5aaee/content/images/thumbnail/45e5659f-d16a-4d35-a223-be0626801db3-16da1c58-23fa-450a-b281-90cd4b167252.png)](https://www.cybrsecmedia.com/cybr-sec-con-2026-adds-ai-sec-con-as-ai-reshapes-cybersecurity/) [One Month to CYBR.SEC.CON 2026: 16 Years in the MakingCYBR.SEC.CON 2026 is one month away, bringing 3,000+ cybersecurity professionals to Houston for two days of hacking, AI, OT security, leadership, learning and community.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ab/67/ab676516-71e3-473d-8f73-9e0692f5aaee/content/images/icon/CYBR.SEC.Media-Logo-copy-d4ab4c7d-984f-4a33-a284-710fe6ca186c.jpg)CYBR.SEC.MediaBill Brenner![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ab/67/ab676516-71e3-473d-8f73-9e0692f5aaee/content/images/thumbnail/Untitled-design-20-05b5b67e-a3f0-45ac-b344-eaa32408935f.webp)](https://www.cybrsecmedia.com/one-month-to-cybr-sec-con-2026-16-years-in-the-making/) ## Winn Schwartau: The Guy Was Talking About Cyberwar Before We Called It Cyberwar **Opening Keynote — Sept. 15, 1:45 PM** Long before cybersecurity became a boardroom priority, Winn Schwartau was warning about information warfare, privacy and the consequences of connecting everything to everything else. Schwartau is one of the industry's genuine pioneers. He famously used the term “Electronic Pearl Harbor” while testifying before Congress in 1991, helping push cyber threats into national-security conversations years before most organizations had anything resembling a modern cybersecurity program. Over the decades, he has continued challenging governments, businesses and security practitioners to reconsider how they think about cyber conflict, privacy, technology and the assumptions underpinning security itself. For an industry currently wrestling with AI, autonomous systems, cyberwar and another generation of technological upheaval, hearing from someone who has spent decades watching supposedly futuristic threats turn into ordinary security problems seems like an appropriate place to start. [Subscribe to the CYBR.SEC.Media newsletter](#/portal/signup/free) ## Andy Ellis: What If AI Makes Humans Worse at Making Decisions? **“Apocalyptic Decisions” — Sept. 15, 4:45 PM** [Andy Ellis](https://www.linkedin.com/in/csoandy/?ref=cybrsecmedia.com) isn't using “apocalyptic” figuratively. Humans, Ellis argues, are extraordinarily good decision-makers. Millennia of evolution have optimized us to make good, fast and inexpensive decisions almost all of the time. That ability helped make us the dominant species on the planet. Then we built algorithms capable of manipulating what we see, what information reaches us and potentially how we make those decisions. Ellis' keynote examines the collision between human decision-making, artificial intelligence and content-targeting algorithms. His premise is deliberately uncomfortable: What happens when we create an information environment that humans aren't actually equipped to navigate? And could technology begin subverting the very decision-making abilities responsible for our success? That's a much bigger question than whether somebody's AI copilot occasionally hallucinates. It's about what happens when machines begin shaping the environment in which human beings decide what is true, what matters and what to do next. ## Ann Delenela: Leadership When Keeping the Lights On Is Literal **“Keeping the Lights On — A Leadership Playbook Forged in Adversity, Built for the Age of AI” — Sept. 16, 9:00 AM** “Keeping the lights on” gets tossed around casually in technology. For [Ann Delenela](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ann-delenela-5650a43/?ref=cybrsecmedia.com), VP and CISO at Entergy, it's considerably more literal. Delenela has spent three decades rising through the profession and defending critical infrastructure that people depend upon every day. Her keynote takes the lessons learned through that career — including lessons forged through adversity — and applies them to another period of disruption as artificial intelligence changes both cybersecurity and leadership. The interesting part is that this isn't simply another “how CISOs should prepare for AI” presentation. It's a leadership story. How do you make decisions when the systems you're protecting matter to millions of people? What does adversity teach you that technology can't? And which of those lessons become even more important when AI accelerates the pace of change? For security leaders, that's the promise of this talk: a playbook built through experience rather than generated by a machine. ## Joe Marshall: The Incident Ends. The Defender Still Takes It Home. **“You Can't Patch Burnout: VPNFilter, the Defender's Toll, and the Playbook Nobody Writes” — Sept. 16, 4:30 PM** In 2018, Cisco Talos exposed VPNFilter, a destructive state-sponsored botnet that compromised roughly half a million routers and network devices around the world. [Joe Marshall](https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeics/?ref=cybrsecmedia.com) helped take it down. His keynote starts with what happened afterward. For seven years, he says, he didn't talk about what the operation took from him or the painful lessons it taught him. His CYBR.SEC.CON keynote is both the war story and the after-action report that cybersecurity rarely writes: secrecy, pressure, burnout and the psychological cost of carrying a major incident home after everyone else thinks it's over. More importantly, Marshall wants to talk about what defenders can do about it. His session will examine recognizing warning signs, containing the damage and recovering with the people around us. “We focus on everyone but ourselves, and it has a cost,” Marshall writes in the session description. ## Four Keynotes, Four Very Different Perspectives That's what makes this keynote lineup interesting. Schwartau brings decades of perspective from someone who was warning about cyber conflict before most people knew they needed to worry about it. Ellis asks whether AI and algorithms could undermine one of humanity's most fundamental advantages. Delenela brings the lessons of leadership and adversity from the world of critical infrastructure into the age of AI. Marshall takes us inside the personal aftermath of one of the most significant state-sponsored cyber operations of the last decade. CYBR.SEC.CON 2026 takes place Sept. 15–16 at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston. 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