Windows Security Expert Yarden Discusses Career Path, AI in Cybersecurity, and New Windows Security Features for AI Agents

This livestream features a conversation with Yarden (Yarden), a Windows security expert with 10 years of experience who began her career accidentally as a QA engineer at SentinelOne after studying to be a pastry chef. She discusses her career progression through CrowdStrike, Trail of Bits, and Vigilant Labs before becoming a freelancer who teaches Windows internals classes with Windsider and Nesco. The discussion covers the changing cybersecurity job market, noting that entry-level QA positions have largely disappeared and the barrier to entry has significantly increased over the past 5-6 years. Yarden explains her minimal use of AI in research, preferring manual reverse engineering because she enjoys the intellectual process, though she occasionally uses it for template code generation and defining basic structures in tools like IDA. The conversation explores new Windows security features designed for AI agents, including anti-tamper protections and a new security model that moves beyond simple user account permissions to include package identity and process groups, addressing the problem that AI agents currently have access to everything under a user's account. Yarden's research focuses on low-level Windows kernel work, reverse engineering, and investigating detection mechanisms, driven by drilling down into why questions until reaching fundamental answers.