Why Trust is the Only Currency in the Age of AI featuring Saeed Elahi
February 9, 2026
The conversation about AI sits at the center of every table. But, there’s an equally important dish accompanying it these days - the conversation about trust. In this episode of When Trust Meets AI, CEO of Drata and host, Adam Markowitz, sits down with Saeed Elahi, Cyber Risk and Assurance Leader at Tenable, to explore why trust is the measure of due diligence in a connected world, how to evaluate AI tools across three distinct risk dimensions and the key strategies for deploying agents at enterprise scale without sacrificing security.
This episode serves as a reminder that nothing comes free in the age of AI - especially trust.
The conversation around AI goes hand in hand with the conversation about trust, these days. In this episode of When Trust Meets AI, CEO of Drata and host, Adam Markowitz, sits down with Saeed Elahi, Cyber Risk and Assurance Leader at Tenable, to explore why trust is the measure of due diligence in a connected world, how to evaluate AI tools across three distinct risk dimensions and the key strategies for deploying agents at enterprise scale without sacrificing security.
What You’ll Learn:
- How to define trust in an interconnected world and why it’s the measure of due diligence in today’s day and age
- The three AI risk buckets that demand different strategies: AI usage, AI security and AI safety
- Why use cases and trust are inseparable and how to enable flexibility
- How to build your “trust dashboard” across the organization
- Why compliance and security have stopped fighting and have become more synergetic The hidden cost of fast AI adoption that boards aren’t seeing
- How to reframe GRC as a business growth engine, instead of a peripheral checklist department
This episode serves as a reminder that nothing comes free in the age of AI - especially trust.
Highlights:
00:00 Introduction & Meeting Saeed Elahi
00:00 Introduction & Meeting Saeed Elahi
03:30 Where AI Creates the Biggest Impact Today
05:23 Use Cases and Trust Are Two Sides of the Same Coin
06:07 The Three Distinct Risk Buckets for AI Adoption
09:17 AI Wins and Surprises: Quick Wins vs. Hallucinations
11:02 How Compliance and Security Finally Merged
15:31 Building a Real-Time Trust Dashboard Beyond Audits
17:33 The Hidden Security Costs of Fast AI Adoption
20:56 Continuous Learning: Upskilling Your GRC Team for AI
23:03 Busting the "GRC is Just Checkboxes" Myth
25:02 Business Books That Shaped Saeed’s Mindset
27:09 Career Advice: View Yourself as Your Own Business
29:36 The Final Truth: Every AI Gain Comes With Security Tradeoffs
Quotes:
- "If you break it down, the way I look at it is you have AI usage, you have AI security, and then you have AI safety, and they're all kind of three distinct buckets. From the organization's perspective, if you're going to allow AI, you wanna make sure you're protecting corporate data.”
- "How can I measure trust without having a measuring stick to gauge that? That's kind of where compliance helps merge that and bring it all together. Every company is gonna have to tweak it a bit given their industry or sector, but there's definitely table stakes that every company should have in a trust dashboard."
- "When a company adopts emerging tech faster, one of the things that gets overlooked is the additional security or IT budget needed to maintain that tech. You might get some efficiencies in operations, but to manage and secure that tech, there's gonna be other investments needed, and I think that level of ROI isn't happening yet across industry.
- “When you're always trying to provide value, you should never stagnate because then you can be phased out, so learning is super important."
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