August 5, 2026

Episode 379 Deep Dive: Sean Duca | Confidence Is Not Permission - Rethinking Authority in the Autonomous SOC

Most security vendors are shipping AI that treats capability as authority. Sean Duca thinks that’s the mistake customers are already paying for. Back on KBKast for a third time, now as co-founder and CEO of getsoteria.ai, Sean makes the case that confidence and permission are two separate gates, and that an autonomous SOC needs both before it touches anything. He walks Karissa through governed autonomy: the machine acts on its own, but only inside a boundary it can’t set or cross. A bank teller and a self-driving car do the heavy lifting on the difference between a human in the loop, on the loop, and off it entirely. He gets specific about shadow mode, the 85% agreement bar his threat hunters have to keep clearing, and why his system fails closed and hands everything back to a person the moment it hits a wall. About Sean: Sean Duca has spent 25+ years in cybersecurity, most of it advising boards and security leaders across Asia Pacific. He’s now co-founder and CEO of getsoteria.ai, following senior roles as CTO for Customer Experience at Cisco (APJC), VP and Regional Chief Security Officer at Palo Alto Networks (APJ), and CTO for APAC at Intel Security. He’s a published author on cybersecurity and calls Singapore home. Keywords: autonomous SOC, AI governance, governed autonomy, agentic AI security, confidence vs permission, human in the loop, AI access control, SOC automation, shadow mode, security operations, AI authority model, CISO, board risk, Sean Duca, getsoteria.ai, KBKast

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