At RSAC Conference 2026, Michael Parisi of Steel Patriot Partners unpacks why the cybersecurity market is drowning in vendor noise -- and why the antidote is not better technology, but more trusted relationships. This conversation is a candid look at what outcome-first consulting actually looks like when the fog clears.
At RSAC Conference 2026, the noise is relentless. Vendor booths, AI pitches, and breathless marketing compete for attention at every turn. Michael Parisi, Chief Growth Officer at Steel Patriot Partners, joins Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli on the ground in San Francisco to name what too few are willing to say out loud: most of the conversation happening on the show floor does not reflect the conversations that actually matter.
The real exchanges, Parisi says, are happening backstage -- in the hallways, over coffee, between practitioners who trust each other enough to ask: does this vendor actually do what they say? That shift back to peer-driven trust is not a trend. It is a correction. Security leaders are exhausted and fragile, operating under intense pressure, and they are returning to the relationships they know rather than the research tools and AI-generated answers they do not trust.
Steel Patriot Partners was built around exactly that dynamic. Their operating principle -- business owners first, engineers second, compliance and security people third -- runs counter to how most consulting firms approach an engagement. Rather than leading with frameworks or certifications, the team starts by asking what outcome the client is actually trying to achieve. Parisi is candid about how often that conversation leads them to steer a client away from the path they came in convinced they needed. That willingness to say no -- and mean it -- is what sets a trusted advisor apart from a vendor.
The outcome-first philosophy shapes every engagement. As founder Jason Ford says, 80% of what Steel Patriot Partners does is a therapy session. Organizations coming in with complex compliance challenges -- FedRAMP, CMMC, HITRUST, DoD IL -- need more than a checklist. They need a partner who has lived those journeys themselves, made the mistakes, and can speak honestly about what is worth pursuing and what is not.
Parisi's advice to anyone evaluating a consulting partner is pointed: ask the question up and down the team, not just of the founder. The firms that have genuinely lived what they sell -- and can talk about the failures as clearly as the successes -- are the ones worth trusting when the stakes are high.
This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight
GUEST
Michael Parisi, Chief Growth Officer, Steel Patriot Partners
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-parisi-4009b2261/
RESOURCES
Steel Patriot Partners: https://www.steelpatriotpartners.com
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KEYWORDS
Michael Parisi, Steel Patriot Partners, Sean Martin, brand spotlight, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, cybersecurity consulting, compliance advisory, FedRAMP, CMMC, HITRUST, DoD IL, trusted advisor, outcome-based consulting, vendor trust, cybersecurity noise, RSAC Conference 2026, security leadership, GRC, business risk, human in the loop
Cutting Through the Fog: Trust, Outcomes, and What Real Consulting Looks Like | A Brand Spotlight at RSAC Conference 2026 with Michael Parisi, Chief Growth Officer of Steel Patriot Partners
[00:00:00] Sean Martin: We're starting again,
[00:00:02] Michael Parisi: again,
[00:00:03] Sean Martin: again. Because we had something in the shot. Something that we didn't expect showed up in the shot, so we had to start again. Sounds like a lot of security programs.
[00:00:15] Marco Ciappelli: That's life.
[00:00:15] Sean Martin: Here we are. We're at RSAC Conference. Our good friend Michael Parisi. You showed up in the shot, but we want you in the shot.
[00:00:22] Michael Parisi: Yeah.
[00:00:23] Sean Martin: Absolutely. You have some stuff to say, my friend. You have some stuff to say and it's a lot.
[00:00:27] Michael Parisi: Yeah.
[00:00:27] Sean Martin: It's always good to see you and we have some incredible conversations on camera.
[00:00:33] Michael Parisi: Yep.
[00:00:34] Sean Martin: Off camera.
[00:00:34] Michael Parisi: Yep.
[00:00:36] Sean Martin: A lot of interesting things going on. And you've seen a lot -- critical infrastructure, the healthcare space, financial services. You, as one of the big four, have been involved in a lot of things. And people trust you and people tell you what they're experiencing and what they're struggling with.
[00:00:55] Michael Parisi: Yeah.
[00:00:55] Sean Martin: And what people on the other side of the camera need to know is that you help them when they trust you to tell you something. And so I'm thrilled to call you a friend and excited to have this chat. We're going to talk about the state of the union -- what's out there and what's happening and how people talk about it. And this is where Marco gets to come in and have some fun looking at marketing as well.
[00:01:22] Marco Ciappelli: I think it's foggy. It's very foggy.
[00:01:25] Michael Parisi: Very foggy.
[00:01:26] Marco Ciappelli: And not just because we're in San Francisco, which is known for the fog. We're talking about a different kind of fog.
[00:01:31] Michael Parisi: How ironic is that, right?
[00:01:33] Sean Martin: Well, the first thing I think of is that building on the hill -- when it's foggy it looks like a ship, and when it's not, it's anything but a ship.
[00:01:38] Michael Parisi: That's right.
[00:01:51] Marco Ciappelli: All right, so we know who you are. People watching may not know who you are. So a little bit about yourself.
[00:02:04] Michael Parisi: Yeah. So I'm Mike Parisi. I'm the Chief Growth Officer at a consulting advisory company called Steel Patriot Partners. As we always say, our approach is business owners first, engineers second, compliance and security people third -- that's what we focus on from a brand and value proposition perspective. I've been here just over a year. I've been around the audit space, the Big Four space, Schellman for a few years, HITRUST for five and a half years, PwC and Deloitte for 15. So always in the cybersecurity space. My passion is really about relationships -- this concept of trusted relationships. And it's so funny how the noise has shifted from traditional cybersecurity companies to now AI companies.
[00:03:17] Marco Ciappelli: Just to throw some more fog in there.
[00:03:19] Michael Parisi: Exactly. Some more fog in there. Look, you know, marketing -- it's funny, my son wanted to go into marketing. And I told him I don't think that's a good career, but now marketers are through the roof in terms of everything they're doing from an AI capability perspective. But is that really true from a messaging and trust perspective? And that's what most of my conversations are about -- who do you trust, who's really vested in the business decisions that you need to make? And that's a lot of the conversations that are happening this week.
[00:04:01] Marco Ciappelli: And this is what inspired this conversation -- we were just chatting, the two of us. You know, we were talking about the show floor -- the fog and the lighting, the blinking lights and loud music. And then backstage where the CSO meets the CEO, meets the community -- it's a completely different story. How do we trust that big circus out there? How do we know what does what it says it does and if it does it right?
[00:04:47] Michael Parisi: That's right.
[00:04:47] Marco Ciappelli: So what are the conversations like nowadays?
[00:04:50] Michael Parisi: I mean, how many times have you heard from CISOs and security folks at RSAC -- oh my god, do I really have to go there every year? But what's phenomenal about the show is that it does create this trusted community to share experiences with. So as much as people may roll their eyes, they still come. And they're coming to have those intimate conversations, but they're filled with so much noise and doom scrolling and marketing that nobody knows where to turn anymore. And I think where the real conversations happen -- it's stuff like this that's going to become invaluable. The conversations are more trusted, people to people. We talk about human in the loop.
[00:05:49] Marco Ciappelli: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:49] Michael Parisi: That's what we're talking about. So how can I ask my friend or somebody within my network, hey, have you heard of this vendor? Have you heard of this solution? Are they for real? What do you use? And what's fascinating is we're almost seeing a movement back to what's more trusted and true from a vendor perspective -- I trust the brand, I trust the name, I trust my sales person, I trust the relationship I've built with that -- in order to sniff out what might not be true from a capability perspective.
[00:06:27] Sean Martin: Yeah. So I had a conversation last night with a gentleman whose daughter wants to become a marketer. And I had a conversation with a friend of mine this morning about his company, which has a cyber practice. The team was told to just go in and talk about agentic AI because that's what everyone's talking about. And I was telling him -- your company is not known for security. You're entering a space that's really not very forgiving at all. And you're going to start talking about something you have no proof or backup or knowledge of. You're not just losing that moment, you're destroying many more because of the conversations that happen outside of this space.
[00:07:24] Michael Parisi: Right.
[00:07:24] Sean Martin: And so that connected with the conversation last night -- where should she go in terms of marketing? And I told him: where is she passionate? What does she care about? What does she know? And it's that last piece. If you don't know how something works and you don't care about what the outcome is for the person who's going to buy that product or service, it's just spewing fog. And if you're doing it without proof, it's fog that's going to destroy your company. And the problem with that is not just for the company -- it's for the people who have a problem they're trying to solve.
[00:08:02] Michael Parisi: Right.
[00:08:02] Sean Martin: How do they cut through that noise? There's so much out there. You have to clear the deck as quickly as possible to find that nugget. You have to blow through the fog.
[00:08:20] Michael Parisi: You got the Italian thing going on there. I love it.
[00:08:22] Sean Martin: I know. I speak with my hands. So I'm going to take that and bring it back to business owner first, engineering second, compliance third. Because I think a lot of people get hung up in the middle -- oh, we can build some really cool stuff -- or, I have to tackle this problem because I need to be compliant. When in fact, it's the business that matters. It's the business you need to understand and know.
[00:08:49] Michael Parisi: Agreed. And that whole exercise is very taxing. It takes time. It takes energy. And you see a bunch of people -- some of them are here -- who all day run around trying to evaluate: oh, what vendor should I choose and where should I spend my money? That's not valuable from a business perspective. What we believe is: let's start with the business outcomes first. Maybe you need to be more efficient. Maybe you're looking for the right security posture. Maybe you're looking to unlock TAM that you haven't addressed from a market perspective. How do you effectively improve ROI in terms of what you're doing from a business standpoint? That's where we start. And although we're engineers and I've got 20-plus years in the compliance and security space -- we all do -- we never start the conversation in that vein. We start with: is this the right decision from a business perspective? I've had more conversations where I steered people away from pursuing federal compliance, because that was the right business decision. Helping them understand: what are the right triggers before you go down this path? It's not about the money or the revenue. It's about the trusted advisor relationship. And we've been through it ourselves -- FedRAMP, CMMC, DoD IL, you name it. We've lived it in two ways: once because a vendor pushed us in that direction and said this is what you need to do, which was a fail -- and once because it was the right business decision for us.
[00:10:52] Marco Ciappelli: And you know, that's the role of a true consultant. They shouldn't be afraid to say something that goes against what you think. That's why you go to a consultant.
[00:11:02] Michael Parisi: Correct.
[00:11:03] Marco Ciappelli: And when you say what is right or what is wrong -- it depends. What's your business objective? What do you need now? How big is your company, where are you going? Maybe now this is good, and then as you grow you need something else. So for me it's kind of like the consultant curates your content for you. Like going to your trusted food store -- the guy has already made the selection for you, everything there is good, you don't have to be the one to try all that stuff. The role of the consultant is: what's your need?
[00:11:53] Michael Parisi: Not only that, but what I find so interesting is that people are very fragile right now within this ecosystem. Everyone is very scared to say: if I make the wrong decision, am I going to be here tomorrow or a week from now? Or is somebody going to find an AI to replace my position? So when you think about decisions, people are looking for other sources in order to substantiate the decision they're going to make. And the more experienced people -- yeah, of course there's AI and everything you can do from a research perspective. But they don't trust it. They don't trust it. So it comes back to this community and the people they're actually leveraging from a relationship perspective. Personal story: I had to put my dog down last weekend. And as I went through that, I didn't hit ChatGPT once, I didn't hit Google once to find out about the disease she had. I called my friends -- you're a dog owner, you've been through this, what do you think we should do? I called my close network, no research whatsoever, because that is a critical emotional moment. I'm not going to listen to what's out there from a research perspective. I want the human interaction to understand what to do. And those were the ones that got me through that -- not AI.
[00:13:42] Sean Martin: In the moment, emotions are high. Not just for yourself.
[00:13:46] Michael Parisi: That's right. Those around you too.
[00:13:48] Sean Martin: And the moment is right there and the decision needs to be made.
[00:13:56] Michael Parisi: That's right. So everything that we do -- that's how we approach it and that's how we built this company and how we continue to build this company -- focused on trusted relationships. I'd rather tell you no, that's the wrong direction, and that does right by you from a business and individual perspective.
[00:14:20] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah. And let's talk a little bit about the company. Steel Patriot Partners. Your headline on the website now is: our branding is our story.
[00:14:34] Michael Parisi: That's right.
[00:14:35] Marco Ciappelli: Which also means no BS. This is what you get. We're not going to try to sell you some circus. This was a choice made a few years ago, when things were not like this. So it is very organic.
[00:15:03] Michael Parisi: It is. And I think it's maybe a bold statement, but we're a little bit ahead of the times. And I believe this is the mentality that as a society we're going to all gravitate toward. It's happening now, but it's happening in closed circles. People still have FOMO -- they don't want to admit that they don't believe in this noise that's out there right now. But they're doing it in closed circles. And we kind of led with that to say: look, we know deep down inside, we're all humans. We know when we have that type of conversation, that's what people are looking for.
[00:16:02] Sean Martin: So what are some of the engagements you have? Is there a trend that organizations are coming to you with -- and what's the other side of that engagement, what's the outcome?
[00:16:22] Michael Parisi: That's a good point. We always focus on outcomes. It aligns to business owners first, engineers second. What's the outcome we're collectively looking to achieve for you individually and for you as a business? And how do we engineer a program, a process, a decision-based element in order to get you to that outcome? We manifest that in terms of how we work, how we spend time, even how we price certain things. Everything is outcome-focused. And the hardest part for individuals and companies is the decision process. How do you make that decision? The other interesting thing is the outcome they think they want is not necessarily the best outcome. There are companies that come to us and say, we want to enter the public sector -- why? Because we hear there are big contracts. Okay, that's great, but that may not be the outcome you actually want. Do you understand everything that comes along with that? So everything we do is outcome-focused. And as our founder Jason says all the time: 80% of what we do is a therapy session.
[00:18:20] Marco Ciappelli: It's a therapy session. That's what we're doing. And a lot of the vendors out there -- it's just marketing and sales. It's not a therapy session that is outcome-focused, based on what those individuals and organizations actually need. Buy me, buy me, buy me -- do I need you?
[00:18:37] Michael Parisi: Yeah, exactly. Do I need you?
[00:18:39] Marco Ciappelli: So as we have a very short amount of time left, what's your ideal client? Who does your company work with?
[00:18:48] Michael Parisi: We like complicated hot messes, let's put it that way. Any size. Really organizations that are struggling to understand: how do I get to the outcome? And it's not just what's the fastest way to get there, but what's the best way? What's going to put us in the best position as an organization and as individuals to capitalize on where we're looking to go? So our ICP is organizations that are struggling with those business decisions. Business owners first. We love people that come to us and say: we've been hit with this -- have you been through this before? Not only have we helped hundreds of organizations through it, we've lived it. And my advice for people is: ask that question up and down the team and across -- not just of the one person who founded the company.
[00:20:27] Sean Martin: So call to action -- clearly connect with Michael. If you want somebody to confide in, Mike's your guy. Jason and Amy are there with him as well at Steel Patriot Partners. I'm excited to have a conversation with Jason about what it means to be a customer and work alongside Steel Patriot Partners to achieve objectives and outcomes. We're going to record that session in a couple of weeks. It's his story that people will get to hear -- and that'll reinforce what we just talked about here: clearing the deck, getting back to the business, doing the engineering that's necessary and feasible to accomplish the outcome and objectives for the business in a way that's compliant.
[00:21:19] Michael Parisi: That's right.
[00:21:19] Sean Martin: That's what you do. You're amazing. Steel Patriot Partners -- people should connect with you. Mike, it's always good to see you, man. Have a good rest of the week.
[00:21:42] Michael Parisi: Absolutely. You too.
[00:21:43] Sean Martin: Thanks everybody for watching. Stay tuned for more here on ITSPmagazine.
[00:21:48] Michael Parisi: Thank you. Thanks for having me, guys.