Catching Waves and Building Empires: CEO Mike Armistead on AI and Cybersecurity

Navigating Cybersecurity Challenges with Mike Armistead

In this episode of The Wireless Way, host Chris Whitaker discusses the complexities of cybersecurity with seasoned entrepreneur Mike Armistead. With over 30 years of experience in creating and selling multiple tech companies, Mike shares practical lessons on persistence, timing, and leadership. The conversation delves into how AI is transforming both defensive and offensive strategies in cybersecurity, the importance of proactive security measures, and the challenges businesses face in maintaining cybersecurity amidst rapid technological changes. Mike also highlights the need for businesses of all sizes to invest in proper cybersecurity measures and the balance between innovation and risk. Tune in to gain valuable insights on how to better protect your organization in today's digital landscape.

00:00 Introduction and Host Welcome
00:23 Guest Introduction: Mike Armistead
01:56 Mike's Career Journey and Influences
04:15 Lessons from Startups and Entrepreneurship
11:43 The Impact of AI on Cybersecurity
15:21 Challenges and Innovations in Cybersecurity
26:32 Advice for Business Leaders on Cybersecurity
28:59 Closing Remarks and Resources

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Transcript

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 0:04

Welcome to another episode of The Wireless Way. I'm your host, Chris Whitaker, and as always, I'm so grateful you're here today. I know there's a lot going on you probably could be doing, and, this is a good topic. I mean, you know, it's the wireless way and we talk a lot about a lot of things and, probably, I don't think I get this topic enough attention, cybersecurity. So, I have a special guest today. We're gonna unpack that, What does it take to build and sell multiple companies in one of the toughest industries? Cybersecurity and I, I've had a front row seat to that. Mike Armistead has done it again and again, leading startups to nine figure acquisitions and now guiding pulse security ai. with more than 30 years of experience across major technology shifts from the early internet, to today's rise of artificial intelligence, you almost can't read a news report without AI being in there somewhere. Mike brings practical lessons from both success and failure, easier to share our persistence, timing, and thoughtful leadership. can help organizations thrive at fast changing times. he spent nearly 40 years building companies, leading teams, driving growth across a wide range of industries. he's co-founded our help build several successful startups like response software, fortify software who, where, and of course, pure software. The guy knows what he is talking about, so I'm so grateful we have him on the show today. in fact, he's still driven by building great teams and tracking big, meaningful challenges. Mike, welcome to the show. I'm so glad we're able to get this set up today. How you doing?

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 1:35

Chris doing great. I really appreciate you having me on.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 1:39

I'm glad to have, like I said, iron sharpens iron. You know, this is a important conversation that is really impacting business. It's impacting revenues for companies, reputations, operational outputs and outcomes. I mean, it touches all parts of technology and business. So, I'm really glad we're having this conversation. as always, my first question, you know, like, what's not the bio man? How did you get here?

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 2:01

Yeah. You know, one thing I always, am surprised by on the bios that when I start thinking about'em is that it leaves out all the people that you've come across in those years. You know, I'm 40 years into this professional life and just thinking about, just all the people that have helped been part of. Just the fabric that gets woven there. I do have two interesting characters of that, that I'll mention, you know, for the audience'cause they're gonna know'em. the, my first startup, was. A guy that, we all, you know, kind of interact with, at least his product in the day was, Reed Hastings, who ran Netflix, for so many years, and Reed had a company before Netflix, that was very technical. It was in the, software quality space. and it related, it was memory, error, debugging. If you could think of a,

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 2:53

So it's exciting.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 2:54

Yeah. It's kind of the, casual, party conversation, revolves

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 2:58

Yeah.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 2:58

so that was one. And then the other one was, one of our advisors of the company that, in my first CEO gig was, Elon Musk of all

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 3:05

Oh wow.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 3:07

and this was early Elon. This was post PayPal. but, early Elon and, you know, he, it was interesting, from that standpoint, he didn't have a lot of interaction with us, to tell you the truth.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 3:18

Yeah.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 3:18

he was there as part of the advisors for the company.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 3:21

Wow. What a fascinating guy. Whether you agree with his beliefs or not? I mean, the dude's had some impact on society, right? I mean, he's an icon. he's left his mark, let's say. I mean, the whole world knows.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 3:32

I would say the same about Reid, you know, he is,

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 3:34

Yeah, that's true.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 3:35

he is, very thoughtful, great person, great manager, and just, has done a lot of really good things. he now owns a ski area. Mountain in Utah.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 3:46

Did not know that. Yeah, did not know that. wow. So, you know, in our pre-show and in your bio we're talking, you know, about your career. A lot of success, a lot of startups. I mean, you live to tell about it, but surely I know along the way things went wrong and, and I think a lot of business leaders and people maybe start their own companies, that's what they're most concerned. Everybody wants success, but we don't often think about, the lessons learned. What kinda nuggets can you share with us that you took from those experiences?

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 4:17

You know, I often relate this to, an analogy here. It's like starting new companies is, you know, I'm in California, so I was like surfing. And, you know, surfing sounds pretty basic, right? you grab a board, paddle out, turn around and raise, and that's all there is. you know, but surfing, when you start thinking about it, especially with related to a startup. the size of the wave makes a huge difference. the wind that's blowing across that wave makes a huge difference. Do waves break differently? according to the different serfs, you gotta think about being able to stand up or not stand up. You know, there's very many things that I think of startups that way, to tell you the truth. it's, it's, they're all a, they all have. similarities in what you have to do to get'em successful, but there's so many different little things that, either go right or wrong, within that, and you, you know, there's either different obstacles that you are, faced with that you need to overcome. but I do say that the whole thing, I mean, I wouldn't do this repeatedly if it wasn't fun. and so there is, there's that element too.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 5:30

Is it, had there been moments where you're like, what am I doing? Why am I trying this, this is crazy. I would imagine being an entrepreneur, you push through those moments clearly, but does it ever happen?

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 5:39

Oh yeah. I mean, my co-founders and I, especially in this one, we talk about the. It can happen weekly sometimes where it does good news, bad news, and, the beauty of the startup is, the consequences are so strong and you're always. Wondering about that, and it feels like survival, there's been plenty, we did response software during COVID we were doing what a small startup does where we had our little office, in Mountain View, California, and, there's a lot of benefit to that as a startup because you need a lot of interaction with that. Suddenly we couldn't interact. daily, and how did we keep that going? And that was a big challenge, you know, through that. other kinds of, challenges. like who wear was the heady days of Web 1.0. it took a lot of, there was a lot of unknowns and there was a lot of effort, especially, know, people were just saying the world was gonna change. I don't know if we've heard that yet with ai. it happens at a different pace than you ever expect, I guess is the way I'd put it. I'm, expecting AI to follow a lot of that web 1.0 thing where. life's gonna change. think it's gonna change in the next year or two. It's probably gonna take a long time for it to change, embed itself in, you know, and, and fully weave itself into the fabric of our everyday life. but it's there and it will change things. And what's interesting is those winners. In 1.0 days were not the winners that eventually, came out of it, five, 10 years later. And that was interesting too. I think that was a good lesson to learn, along the way.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 7:23

Yeah. adapt and overcome, you know, or, or you will, you won't make it. I mean, You have to, you have to adapt at the times. I remember hearing a story from a colleague years ago, that worked, for Blackberry, If you know those, the time you got a Blackberry on your hip. You were the, you were the one. you were the big boy, big, big guy on campus. So anyway, they were in this meeting and someone raises their hand. It's a q and a session. They asked the CEO, Hey. So, you know, iPhone just launched the app store. What's our response to that? And he said, it's just a fad. No, no one needs apps. People just use these devices for email and texting and phone calls. That's all at it. And you said you could hear a collective sigh across the audience. Everyone knew. Oh man, this is the beginning of the end. you know, Hey, did we go Netflix and Blockbuster? Right? Great, great story of how, you know, if you didn't, evolve with the times. Yeah, it does, it, it does change.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 8:15

I, think there's, there's lessons, you know, there's lessons in the web 1.0 bubble popping and I think, people are relating a lot of that to AI right now. but I think one of the things that gets missed is, certainly there was a lot of wealth created before that bubble popped. the ripple effect, once it did, really shut down, venture capital at the time shut down a lot of funding. You know, it was the same during the financial crisis sometimes those ripples get into places that you never thought they'd reach because you, you thought, I, I remember you, you just had mentioned this, Chris, and, and brought back a memory of I had just taken that first CEO job. in late 2000 and was told by my investors, oh yeah, this is just a head cold. it's nothing. We're gonna get through this. unfortunately, three months later, I'm having to lay off, a quarter of the company because we wouldn't make it, we didn't have the finances to do it

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 9:14

Gosh.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 9:14

It, you know, and then we got a double whammy on that one because the nine 11 hit and we had a lot debt outstanding. talk about learning through failure. I learned about what debt can do, especially when you have these unexpected turns of, that those creditors came and asked for all their money. you know what? You owe it to them. I mean, they lent it to you, and so. we couldn't raise any extra money because the extra money was gonna go to them because we had to pay off the things that we didn't have enough money left to pay off. it really taught me in a startup world, the dangers of having debt. and that's why venture capital is popular Now it has its own, cut because you can't forget that venture capitalists are there to make money for their limited partners. they will help you. but you just gotta keep that in mind. and so, they sometimes get a bad rep for taking the side of their investors, like cutting losses, not funding things, but, if you keep that in mind and know how to work with them. They're a tremendous resource and they, give you the fuel that you need to get off the launchpad. And that's what happens in startups. You have to, you have to get off that launchpad or else you're just gonna be a, know, either if you have enough money for a while, you'll just be a zombie, or, you won't, and you'll be one of the nine outta 10 that don't make it. and I think that ecosystem and that challenge even now in my sixth one, scares me at times. but it also, provides a lot of clarity on what you have to do and you're there to give value. Your product needs to give value to your customer, like no other. it's gotta replace things in a new way. You talked about shifts in technology and new ways of doing things. Absolutely. It's gotta provide that and provide a value in that and do it in a way that's better than it was before.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 12:45

Yes. you're spot on there. my day job, we talk, a lot about all various types of the tech stack, and oftentimes I may have a dozen suppliers that can do the same thing to solve for X. and of course, these dozen suppliers like, Hey, why are we getting the deal? why is it not coming our way? I'm like, well, there's no differentiators. You look just like everybody else, and it now is up to salesmanship and who's most responsive and who can be most aggressive at pricing but if you have a differentiator. Now, that's why they're making the buying decision and I'm doing price like, hey, this is solving a better problem. Faster, quicker, easier, whatever. And, this is kind of, you know, pivoting to the, one of the main things I really wanted to talk to you about was, you know, cybersecurity and ai. How is AI changing that cybersecurity conversation for CISOs and bigger companies?

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 13:33

Yeah, two main ways. I, I put it in two big buckets. One is we can't forget, cybersecurity is about the adversary partly of course about the defender. I mean, those are the two sides to it. And AI is changing both worlds. the world of the adversary. is changing, uh, and I can relay the story again. Back, back to founding a, a company in 2003, we actually talked to our investors and said the words, no way would another country attack a different country because it cause a war. was kind, that was reality in 2003. today, a Chinese group, or a Russian group or something like that, attacking something else, happens all the time and we don't even bat an eye it. So there's change that happens there now with ai almost, you know, just like AI can help non-programmers, programmers write a program, it can help, attackers, that aren't technical. Actually have the tooling that they need to actually, execute an attack, and an attack that works at a scale and a speed that our infrastructures aren't used to. So that's kind of the bummer side of, how AI is affecting, the world. The upside is it also gives the defenders, new tools and different ways of using it. if you're a cybersecurity vendor and you don't talk about AI right now, maybe something's wrong with your marketing department or something, but it has real advantages now in the history of cybersecurity. It has grown from practitioner level, technical level up, that's just been, its history. When we have had malware. look for malware detectors. When we, give access to people, we now have to control that access because, a lot of the real important parts of companies, are now in the cloud So, those are all really keys. But I also think AI gives the advantage to the leadership teams too. and that's a real, unmined, area that I think can shift, you know, the focus to being detection only, or, you know, there's really, the trend I'd say in cybersecurity is all about how fast you can detect something. And we should be also thinking about how to build the prevention side up. You know, how do we actually deter the attack happening in the first place because our defenses are so strong. AI is definitely having that big impact. And, what I'm doing now and what pulled me outta retirement was the fact that I think I can make a difference and our company can make a difference in, having some more proactiveness to this through the use of this new technology, ai.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 16:25

That's fantastic. I mean, yeah, there's tremendous, investments being made by companies. You know, there's cyber insurance, cybersecurity insurance, you know, you got CISOs, you got all these layers of, developers and coders. in fact, someone was telling me there's like, hundreds of thousands of open job recs for cybersecurity professionals. so there's a lot of investment going on, a lot of activity, but. Is there trouble in Paradise? I mean, is all this investment, it fell to deliver what people need to protect their companies and their data? What are your thoughts on that?

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 16:58

I'd say, you know, there's always been This arms race that happens in cybersecurity. And we're actually at a time right now where the attackers have a bit of the advantage. I would give them that.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 17:11

It's scary.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 17:13

and, and it is scary, uh, within that. and you have certain things that are novel today. you have called a, you know, a prompt injection, which is basically. Having the attackers, send a prompt to a perfectly well-meaning LLM and having it do what it's not meant to do. And, you know, either you, you make use of the infrastructure there or the answers, things like that. you know, I think where AI has the, the consumer or public. Caught their imagination is in the, the deep fakes that can happen now. and just how good the imagery is and the fact that you can stick people in what looks like. You know, certain circumstances that they'd never be in. And you can kinda make that image look really real. I mean, those are pretty novel, now. but at the same time, and there has been a lot of spend, to, like you were mentioning to, to go after it. I do think. Cybersecurity at times plays a whack-a-mole game, which is, you know, something comes up, they, they, they try to detect it and solve it and you know, the adversaries innovate as well. And so there's this propensity to, just go stop that. Oh, I have to go stop this. Oh, this third one I have to go stop. that's somewhat what I meant by detection versus prevention we need to start thinking about how can we change the game on the adversaries and get ahead of this so that it isn't so much about the technique they're using. it gets more about, oh, I've built enough defense that they aren't even gonna try, you can use analogies that everybody is familiar with as just like, you know, your security of your home and how many doors and windows you leave open. So that makes it easy for them, And then you go on your vacation for a week and, see what happens. and it is, it's true even in the cyber sense, like how easy is it to break in, how easy is to get to what we'd call the crown jewels of an organization, you know? and that might be. Information about their customers. It might be the credit cards that they store on a retail site. It might be health records. You know, it might be different things like that. but you need to build the defenses that do that, and you need to think proactively of how do I thwart. those innovations that the adversaries are using. I do think we're in a period where it does feel like the adversaries have a bit of the advantage, but I have faith that, there's innovation happening on the defender side too. mostly companies are trying to do good and, you know, I think society mostly is good.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 19:55

Yeah.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 19:55

Kind of, thwarting these things that are bad. And, we'll get there. And I think, we're gonna have to continue to spend unfortunately for that. But, part of that spend, we have to remember is, the businesses are using these technologies. I keep saying new with ai, as we both know, it's not really a new technology, but I think the current models, the LLMs and things like that are kind of new to the landscape, but they're using these things for really good business. it's advancing the ball. it's helping make interactions with their customers better. It's, being able to describe things better for people. it's increasing the speed of that it's cybersecurity's job. To mitigate the risk that comes with that. And you had mentioned too, Chris, the attack surface has expanded now. Yep. And so it's the job of cybersecurity to help protect that expanded, network. But I think that's where innovations are happening. and I do think that to enable the business, we need to do the spend that mitigates that risk. Because if you don't. Consumers and other people, whoever your customers are, lose trust in your systems and that is gonna be bad for business.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 21:10

Yeah.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 21:10

so you know, that spend has to be there. It doesn't have to be extreme, it needs to do its job.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 21:16

Yeah. What's the saying? you think it's expensive to deploy this to see how expensive it is to not deploy? Because Yeah, if you, you know, once you get bit by it. Do you have any insight on like, what is the size of a, of a company to be a good target for a cyber security bad actor? I mean, if someone was going after a company, do mama and pops have to worry or is it just Fortune five hundreds?

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 21:38

Yeah. Here's where something we just discussed earlier, comes into play. I think, the technology right now can cast a very wide net. And so, normally it wasn't that they would go after the mom and pops. Depends on the actor, the threat actors. if they're, a well organized criminal organization, gonna do the Willie Sutton thing. And, you know, why do you rob banks? Well, it's because that's where the money is. the adversaries will go after where the money is, whatever that means to them. there's other targets, you know, there certainly can be targets for. Just causing disruption, to the organization just for the heck of it. we're starting to see a bit of a rise of that. if you think of, like a year and a half ago, the casinos were hit with a ransomware thing. But it was primarily just to disrupt In the end it was a very expensive disruption, but it was to do that. And I think they traced down even the Jaguar Land Rover, incident that shut down manufacturing of those cars, to a actor group that. More or less kind of protesting kind of stuff. it could happen to mom and pops, especially if there's easy Pickens to take. So, you know, I often am talking to people about just. Good security hygiene. You know, you still need to have passwords under control. and by that I mean, these, it used to be, you know, they'd say change of every two weeks. Well, people then forget their passwords and revert back to something super easy to remember and or, or apply to all their things. And it's much better to have a very lengthy password, but maybe use a password manager now.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 23:20

You.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 23:21

you do have to worry about someone getting into that password manager, but that's a lot harder for the hackers to do than, them remembering, security 1, 2, 3 as your password. So, for organizations that gets into, things that are, their it. Infrastructure has to withstand real basic stuff. these days a lot of it's in the cloud. So you gotta watch your access, pay attention to that. if people are no longer with your organization, you gotta remember to cut off their access. And it's not that they're gonna necessarily, cause a problem. that's something out there that maybe a bad guy could use, we talk a lot about, I am longtime application security, person by training. software runs a lot of our businesses and we've gotta make sure that it doesn't have holes in it.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 24:08

absolutely.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 24:09

yeah, so

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 24:11

Yeah, I mean, I talk to a lot of companies every day and some of them may have, thousands of cell phones and tablets. Back to your point, we do this analysis on their expenses actually, and we find out that 10% of their thousand phones, Are still active and there's no employee there to use them. they just never turned it off. And it still has OneDrive on it, and maybe it has the share folders on it and, shared drives, whatnot. And all the corporate data's on there. It's like, do you even know where this phone is? and they don't. it's probably some drawer somewhere or an employee just shoved it in a box when they left. and along that lines, again, being the IOT guy that I am. What are your thoughts on, how many iot sensors are deployed and businesses and even at home? I think about my Nest thermostat, my ring cameras, smart tv, smart refrigerator, everything. Smart this, smart that, it almost surprises me how lack of cybersecurity conversations are being had for those kind of deployments. I mean, have you ever been involved in any of those kind of conversations with iot?

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 25:11

some of the people that we've, serviced and had as customers, have a lot of iot, portions to it. and some of it had, strong ramifications like being a power company or a gas line, and they certainly do think very seriously about that. but it's not as much in the consumer end of things. I wish it was to tell you the truth. Like you said, you're surprised by it. So am I. there's a whole generation, and I know because I have, four kids that, don't think about it. I think enough to say, do I really wanna have an opening here? that could be. Could be taken it. Now, I, I do drive a Tesla and I'm, I know it's recording wherever I'm driving and things like that. But you know, there's some of that, that, you know, there's a balance, I guess I'd say. What are you willing to accept to give out to have a better experience? what do you not want to have, out there as an experience? And so, because these things are gonna be used in one way or another, and, you know, we have to, we have to be, thinking about that and the IOT side, I do think there's, there was such an expansion of making the product better, by giving it a way talk to out, external to itself. But that opened up that attack surface and that attack surface can be used. And you know, there's plenty of hacks that started from the HVAC system because that's how somebody gained access to the network. And then as adversaries can be very patiently moved around the network without triggering, you know, a bunch of trip liars. Until they found out where, what, you know, there was something worthwhile to extract and then they extracted it and, and that, that's what we have to worry about. I think too, it's, it's not necessarily that you're worried about your refrigerator giving up, you know, your social security number, but if the refrigerator is in your home network and your home network has, your financial, has maybe passwords lying around in some.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 27:19

Yeah.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 27:20

to start worrying about it.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 27:21

Yeah, that's true.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 27:23

of life.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 27:23

That's right. And, if there's a refrigerator that stores your credit card information and it can, do an online order for Amazon groceries or DoorDash'cause you're low on milk. That information's there and something you say kind of triggered another cliche, you know, for everything you gain in life, you give up something. I mean, it's almost next to impossible to gain something and, not have a cost. Our sacrifice, our downside. I mean, even, being successful, it may be your time, maybe you're giving up your time. I mean, but, uh, but that's spot on You had so many of these apps now, you get it for free, but you gotta give us all this information. Let's track you everywhere. Or you could pay us$10 a month and, we won't track you. very interesting. Well, I know we just kind of scratched the surface of this such a big topic. Any advice for business leaders out there that are concerned about cybersecurity? what would your advice be to someone that owns a medium sized business and they're growing and they have a lot of, sensitive corporate data. What's your advice to'em?

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 28:21

Don't bury your head in the sand. if you're small and you don't have the expertise. think about getting an assessment, around cybersecurity from somebody. there's plenty of very reputable people that can do that. the large organizations, you know, they all know this and they all do allocate budget for it. and they do that, but even they have to think about, the different kind of security basics. I talked earlier about, these advanced, hacking techniques and these innovations, and even what AI brings to that. You know what, in the end, they usually almost always exploit something that is, I'd call old school, like an old school vulnerability or something like that. So it kind of gets down to do your proper security, what I'd call hygiene. It's like, brushing your teeth and things like if you don't want a cavity. do those things, and do proper hygiene floss.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 29:19

right.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 29:20

and then it's the same with security. if you really don't know, don't be in the dark because that's, that's when it gets, that's when you know it's, it gets bad. and if you're a consumer, you know, just be aware. You know, it's

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 29:33

Yeah.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 29:33

be critical of kind of message you see. the phishing. Attacks are gonna get super good because they're gonna know, it's gonna feel like it comes from your best friend.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 29:45

Mm-hmm.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 29:46

your best friend, but verify that, you

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 29:48

That's right.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 29:49

I mean, verify

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 29:50

Right.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 29:50

take the proper steps.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 29:52

Yeah. Another cliche comes to mind. You can tell I love cliches pay now or pay layer, but you're going to pay. I mean that. And that is so true with so many of these business technology conversations. Everybody's trying to cut corners and save money and almost always ends up costing them more. Almost always.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 30:09

and,

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 30:09

gosh.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 30:10

as you do your security assessments, it might actually even generate business idea or a positioning that you're more trusted for your customers. You know, there's lots of ways to do that, and I'm a firm believer being in cybersecurity for a long time. it needs to help obtain the business goal, not just be cybersecurity unto itself. And so, yeah, I'll be thinking about that, but I do think it's an important

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 30:32

That's a good point. Make it a part of the business plan. well, Mike, it's been a great conversation. is there any last words, anything we missed? Anything you wanna leave us with? a favorite book quote or anything else?

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 30:45

it is such a broad topic and, there's so much going on, with it. I think we kind of, skim the surface in a really good way. So I'm pretty happy with that. you say book, I go between my trashy books tend to be like sci-fi or, things. I know it was made a series, it was actually an Apple series. I should. Yeah, I would say it's that. But the

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 31:07

Yeah,

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 31:08

if you've never read the Murder bot, series, they're extremely, they have a good sense of humor in'em. but, some really good, you should pick,

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 31:17

I'll have to, I will look it up. No, I like sci-fi. I like anything with technology that,

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 31:21

Yeah.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 31:22

that it sounds scary already, you know.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 31:24

It's actually funnier than scary.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 31:26

oh, good. Oh, I'm in, I'm in. Well, Mike, again, thanks so much for your time. check the show notes, folks. I'll have some links to learn more about Mike and his organization. and yeah, on your website, I've noticed you got some great articles. Actually, I already reposted one on LinkedIn, Good thought leadership. And back to your point, it's like, you don't know, find someone that does, or, call Mike and his team. I mean, there's folks out there that can help you. but this is a topic of cybersecurity. You wanna, you wanna do your due diligence, so thanks so much, Mike. I appreciate it.

mike-armistead_1_11-25-2025_093029: 31:57

Hey, glad to be here.

chris_1_11-25-2025_123029: 31:58

Fantastic. And there you go folks. Another episode of The Wireless Way. And as always, if a customer or a colleague or a teammate came to mind, please share this episode with'em. I really appreciate us how we love spread the good news of technology, how it's solving problems and increasing revenue for businesses. rising tide rises all boats. And you can always check out, the wireless way.net. And there's a contact us button if you have any feedback, comments or suggestions. Love to hear from you and, we'll see you next time on the Wireless way.