KEYNOTE // At the Edge: The Rising Cost of Our Cyber Pain Threshold
Daria Bahrami, Dreadnode
KEYNOTE // At the Edge: The Rising Cost of Our Cyber Pain Threshold
Abstract
Cyber conflict has hovered below the threshold of warfare because its effects have, so far, been reversible. As AI-enabled capabilities accelerate attacks and recovery stays at human speed, that margin is getting expensive. The cost is increasingly shared across borders, yet policy still treats each attack as a cleanup job for engineers and security teams. AI is making that untenable. Drawing on SEC incident filings and recent attacks on hospitals and their suppliers, from wipers to ransomware that halted production worldwide, this keynote measures how quickly organizations recover what they've lost, what it costs when they can't, and how close we are to flipping the equation that has kept cyber conflict in the gray zone.
Daria Bahrami
Daria Bahrami is the Head of Policy at Dreadnode, where she architects policy positions and strategic initiatives at the intersection of offensive AI and cybersecurity. A recognized voice in the industry, her writing and analysis have been featured in Fortune, War on the Rocks, and CyberScoop’s Safe Mode podcast. She also curates Machine Speed, a policy intelligence dashboard and Substack analyzing the AI cyber landscape. Previously, Daria served as a technical advisor to DARPA’s AI Cyber Challenge, leading engagement strategy for the global automated vulnerability detection competition. Her career spans technical operations and high-level strategy, including prior roles as Lead Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst at Deloitte Global, Cyber Program Manager at the R Street Institute, and Partnerships Specialist at the National Geographic Society. Daria holds a degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
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