Your Security Vendor Can't Tell You If Their Product Works

Every security vendor’s demo is built to find something wrong in your environment. That’s the sales tactic, not proof the tool works, and Tony Lauro admits it on the record.

Tony Lauro, Akamai’s Senior Director of Security Technology and Strategy, joins Max Clark to walk through what’s actually changed in bot management, why the old “human or machine” question is dead, and what replaced it. Along the way: a client whose sequential order numbers let a competitor read their daily order volume through a public API, no breach involved, the three places AI is hitting a business at once, Akamai’s move into the browser, and the closing admission both of them land on together, that nobody, buyer or vendor, always knows if a security purchase was the right one.

Chapters

0:01 How sequential order numbers exposed one company’s growth rate to a competitor 1:00 Why “human or bot” is the wrong security question now 3:54 AI agents that act like your customers, and why bot management needs a third tier 26:38 Brand safety versus listing volume: a marketplace’s real tradeoff 29:03 Cyber fusion: why security and marketing finally have to talk 36:57 Pushing your security policy to the edge means trusting your provider’s judgment call 45:01 The three places AI is actually hitting your business at once 50:57 Prompt injection and what a firewall built for AI actually watches for 1:28:57 Every proof of value finds something. That’s not proof it works. 2:04:38 The default is the most important thing you never reviewed

What We Mentioned

• Akamai, bot management and API security
• Akamai’s “Firewall for AI,” announced at RSA Conference
• Akamai’s acquisition of LayerX, announced May 14, 2026
• robots.txt and llm.txt, the standards good bots and crawlers are supposed to honor
• AEO and GEO, answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization

About Tony Lauro

Tony Lauro is Senior Director, Security Technology and Strategy at Akamai. Thirteen years inside Akamai’s bot management and API security practice, working the exact problem this episode covers: telling good traffic from bad without losing customers in the process.

About Signed

Signed is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, sits down with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who’ve lived inside real enterprise tech deals. New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast.

If you’re in the middle of a real tech decision and want someone in your corner, book an intro call at itbroker.com. Buy tech without regret.