Thomas Richard talks to Gary Alterson, VP Customers Solutions & Success, Armor Defense

Gary Alterson on agentic SOCs, AI spend control, and building Sovereign AI

Thomas chats with Gary Alterson on the Cybersecurity Recruiter Podcast, covering Gary’s 30-year security career and why AI makes the current era especially impactful.

Gary describes Armor’s AI-embracing approach, including an agentic SOC that automates roughly 80-90% of triage, while outlining customer challenges with AI adoption: data privacy/security, runaway token spend, and inconsistent output quality.

He explains Armor’s Sovereign AI platform (sovai.com), which centralizes API keys, routes tasks across different models (including private models that avoid sending customer data to public models), enforces policies and budgets, improves prompts, provides prebuilt agent swarms and workflows, and shares development plans internally.

They discuss hiring for curiosity and self-starting traits, career advice: say yes, prioritize ruthlessly, find mentors and time management. Gary’s recommendation: the Manager Tools and Career Tools podcasts.

00:00 Welcome and banter

00:36 Guest intro and background

01:43 30 years in security

03:24 AI in the SOC today

04:52 AI risks and costs

07:37 Model routing and controls

12:52 Talent still matters

16:22 What is sovereign AI

20:04 Customer success and support

24:48 Career advice for SOC

31:07 Time management tactics

34:08 Standing out to advance

39:29 Books and podcasts

41:07 Wrap up and thanks

Nexo - Executive, GTM & Cybersecurity Recruitment https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaspropen/