Ready to hear from someone who's witnessed the evolution of application security from the front lines? Meet Zack Conord, VP of Corporate Sales at XBOW and an experienced cybersecurity leader with a proven track record in bringing advanced security solutions to market, joining our "Securing the Future: AI, Open Source, and the Evolution of Managing Vulns" panel.
Conord brings a unique vantage point to the vulnerability management conversation—having spent nearly four years at GitHub where he directed global go-to-market efforts for GitHub Advanced Security and led a team of specialist security sales professionals. His journey from helping enterprises adopt security tools for the world's largest open source repository to evangelizing autonomous security testing at XBOW represents the exact paradigm shift our industry is experiencing.
Three reasons Conord delivers game-changing perspective on AI and vulnerability management:
He understands the business-security divide at enterprise scale. During his tenure as GitHub's Advanced Security Business Lead, Conord worked with countless organizations struggling to bridge the gap between development speed and security requirements. Through directing global go-to-market strategies, he gained deep insight into why traditional security approaches fail to keep pace with modern development—and why AI-powered solutions are essential as Copilot and similar tools accelerate code production exponentially.
He's driven by solving application security's toughest challenges. Conord's move to XBOW stems from his passion to address what he calls an "existential crisis" in the industry—threat landscapes evolving faster than security teams can adapt. By joining the team founded by Oege de Moor (creator of GitHub Copilot) and Nico Waisman (former CISO at Lyft), he's helping organizations understand and remediate what is truly exploitable at scale, not just what scanners flag as potential issues.
He brings DMV-rooted expertise in security transformation. With years spent building the Mid-Atlantic's cybersecurity ecosystem—from his time at Sonatype managing accounts across Maryland, Virginia, and the broader Southeast—Conord understands the unique challenges our region's federal contractors, government agencies, and enterprises face when securing software supply chains that depend heavily on open source components.
When Conord joins fellow innovators from Fianu, Manifest Cyber, and SixMap on stage, expect insights on a fundamental truth: if we can build AI that autonomously exploits vulnerabilities, so can adversaries—at scale. His perspective from XBOW, where AI agents "think and act like hackers" to reach #1 on HackerOne's North America leaderboard, offers a sobering preview of both the threats and defenses defining tomorrow's security landscape.
Preparing Organizations for an AI-Transformed Security Future
XBOW's breakthrough success—becoming the first AI-powered pentester to top HackerOne's rankings with over 1,000 validated vulnerabilities—demonstrates what Conord believes is the future of security: autonomous agents that deliver "exploitability insight at machine speed." His commitment to helping companies prepare for these rapid changes makes him an essential voice in understanding how organizations must evolve their security practices.
As Conord noted when joining XBOW: "Security teams have always struggled to keep up with the pace of development. Now they're being asked to keep up with the speed of AI-powered development." The "Securing the Future" panel represents a critical conversation for every organization grappling with securing AI-generated code while defending against AI-powered attacks.
Don't miss your chance to hear Conord's market-tested insights on managing vulnerabilities in an era where the threat landscape evolves faster than ever before. Request a seat at DMV Rising 2025 now and learn how the DMV's security leaders are helping companies secure their future in the age of AI.
