Leading from the Attacker’s Perspective: Moral Courage, Muscle Memory & AI-Driven Cyber Resilience with Snehal Antani, CEO at Horizon3.ai

In this episode of CXO Secrets, David McClelland sits down with Snehal Antani, CEO of Horizon3.ai, to explore leadership, resilience, and cybersecurity through the attacker’s lens. Drawing on his journey from CIO and CTO roles at GE Capital and Splunk to serving with U.S. Special Operations, Snehal shares why modern cyber resilience is built as much on mindset, cadence, and muscle memory as it is on technology. The conversation dives into leading under pressure, building high-performing teams for hostile environments, and how AI is reshaping both offensive and defensive cybersecurity. Snehal offers practical insights on training like you fight, reducing attacker dwell time, influencing at board level, and why CXOs now have a clear “duty to know” when it comes to cyber risk. A must-listen for CIOs, CISOs, and senior leaders looking to strengthen cyber resilience by adopting the attacker’s perspective and preparing their organisations for an AI-driven threat landscape.

Snehal Antani

CEO

Horizon3.ai

Snehal Antani is CEO & co-founder of Horizon3.ai, a cyber security company that pioneered the use of AI to autonomously conduct penetration testing.

Prior to Horizon3, Snehal served as the first Chief Technology Officer for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). As a member of the Commander’s executive team, he led data analytics, cloud/edge computing, and cybersecurity initiatives

Prior to serving within US Special Operations, Snehal was CTO & SVP at Splunk, held multiple CIO roles at GE Capital, and started his career as a Software Engineer at IBM.

Snehal earned a Masters in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic University (RPI), a BS in Computer Science from Purdue University where he was their 2023 Distinguished Alumni, holds 18 patents with 16 additional patents pending.

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Horizon3.ai

Horizon3.ai helps organizations eliminate attack paths before attackers can exploit them. Our flagship product, the NodeZero® platform, empowers you to continuously find, fix, and verify your exploitable attack surface with autonomous pentesting and other security operations.