SuperSOC: Conversations with the People Shaping the Future of Security Operations

The Realistic Path to Cyber Defense Across IT, OT and Cloud ft. Daniel Kästle @ ex-Mercedes-Benz

Qevlar AI Season 1 Episode 7

Most enterprises talk about unifying IT, OT and cloud security, but very few actually pull it off. In this episode, Ahmed has invited Daniel Kästle, former Head of Cyber Defense at Mercedes-Benz, to break down what it really takes to move from three isolated security worlds to a risk-driven cyber defense capability.

You’ll discover:

→ Why IT, OT and cloud security remain stubbornly siloed, and why the real blockers have nothing to do with tools.

→A practical blueprint for building interoperability without chaos, even when threat models and data formats differ wildly.

→ Why no vendor will ever give you the mythical one platform for everything, and what unified visibility actually means in real life.

→ How some organizations successfully build teams that understand all three environments without hiring unicorn analysts.

→ The governance decisions that matter most when you need to isolate systems or contain fast-moving attacks

→ Why retention is Daniel’s surprising north-star metric for SOC health.

Agenda

00:00 – Introduction: Why unifying IT, OT, and cloud still feels impossible

02:03 – The real reason these environments stay siloed (not a tooling problem)

03:29 – Why the term SOC no longer reflects what modern teams actually do

04:42 – What unified visibility realistically looks like and where it stops

06:45 – Why a single platform can never cover IT, OT, and cloud

08:22 – The only viable starting point for interoperability

10:53 – How to build cross-domain talent without chasing unicorn hires

14:40 – Making governance work when IT and OT operate under different rules

17:01 – How unified cyber defense changes the response to global threats

19:23 – Why speed of response matters more than building perfect defenses

20:14 – Fire Round

Follow Daniel Kästle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dk31337/

Follow Ahmed on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmed-achchak-872554109/

Stay tuned for Qevlar AI updates: https://www.linkedin.com/company/qevlar

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