Line Cook to CISO: Eric Freeman on AI, Access Control, and Why Security Is Just Dinner Prep

Episode notes

Eric Freeman is the CISO at Writer, an AI-native company that has built its own large language model. Before that, he worked across blockchain and emerging technology. Before any of that, he was a line cook pulling 16-hour shifts in a restaurant kitchen six days a week. That background shows up in everything about how he leads. In this episode, Eric draws a direct line between prepping for dinner service and implementing security controls, between reading a plate and reading a log, between surviving a Friday night rush and surviving a major incident. We get into how AI is changing both offense and defense in cybersecurity right now, with specific examples of how his team is using LLMs to automate vulnerability validation end-to-end. He explains why context is the only thing that makes AI useful and shares a learning framework where team members use personal analogies to internalize unfamiliar concepts through LLMs. Eric also doesn't hold back on what's broken. He makes the case that cybersecurity stress is a structural problem, not a personal one, and proposes a mandatory security credit score for businesses.