AI in Cybersecurity: Lessons from Hacker Summer Camp 2025 - A Month in the Trenches
How Three Weeks in Israel and Black Hat 2025 Revealed the Real State of AI Security—Beyond the Hype, Through the Challenges, to What Actually Works
Bottom Line Up Front: After spending a month immersed in the global cybersecurity ecosystem—three weeks in Israel and a final week at Black Hat/DEF CON 2025 - one thing is crystal clear: AI isn't just changing cybersecurity, it's fundamentally redefining what security means in 2025. But while the technology promises are being delivered, our governance, vendor landscape, and implementation strategies are struggling to keep pace with a market growing from $25.35 billion to a projected $93.75 billion by 2030.
The Reality Check: A Month in Two Critical Ecosystems
Spending three weeks in Israel followed by hacker summer camp in Las Vegas gave me something invaluable—the ability to filter out the hype, buzzwords, and sales pitches to get to the real substance. When you're sitting with some of the brightest minds in cybersecurity for weeks on end, when you're listening to VCs explain where the smart money is flowing, and when you're watching Black Hat 2025 demonstrate actual measurable AI breakthroughs, the picture becomes remarkably clear.
The Israeli ecosystem, which covers a massive portion of the global cybersecurity industry, combined with the diverse voices from across the United States and beyond at hacker summer camp, provided the perfect lens to understand where this market is truly heading. And here's what I learned.
