Episode 65: From Big Data to Personal Safety: Doxxing, AI Risk, and Protecting People in a Data-Driven World with Rachel Vrabec

Brought to you by 909Shield. Interview fraud is on the rise — fake candidate profiles, proxy interviews, and AI-driven scams designed to slip past your hiring team. 909Shield helps organizations keep their interview process secure end to end. Learn more at 909shield.ai.909Exec is the executive leadership podcast from 909Cyber, hosted by founder and CEO Den Jones, whose three-plus decades in enterprise security span Adobe, Cisco, SonicWall, and Banyan Security — where cybersecurity meets business strategy.In episode 65, Den is joined by Rachel Vrabec, founder and CEO of Kanary, to discuss how personal data has become both a powerful asset and a serious liability in the age of AI.Rachel traces her path from growing up a builder in Northern Wisconsin, to strategy consulting at IBM (design strategy, SAP, early enterprise Apple Watch deployments, and IoT safety modeling across Seoul, Madrid, and Tokyo), to political data science at Civis Analytics — where she sat beside the head of security while state-funded actors targeted the company's predictive models during the 2016 election. That front-row seat to data's power and risk pushed her to found Kanary: a platform that scrapes the web to map an individual's exposure, builds threat models for doxing, impersonation, and account takeover, and automates mitigation — for individuals and for organizations including the federal DOJ, major tech companies, and highly targeted nonprofits.Den and Rachel dig into how AI accelerates both the accuracy and the danger of personal data exposure, why Kanary acts as a "personal pen tester" running popular prompts against LLMs to catch leaks, and how harmful data can be removed or aged out as models retrain. They also cover Kanary's move toward multimodal protection (images and video), why takedowns alone aren't enough, and how digital signals now plug into physical security programs.The conversation closes with Rachel's honest take on founding a startup: the pressure of hyper-growth narratives, why "getting the right people in the right seats" is the real unlock, and how to stop carrying founder regret as baggage that slows you down.What we cover:Interview fraud and how 909 Shield protects hiringRachel's path from IBM to political data science at Civis AnalyticsGender dynamics in early tech educationNation-state attacks on the 2016 election, witnessed firsthandFrom "big data" and neural nets to today's AI brandingWhy Rachel founded Kanary: data as early-warning protection, not monetizationThreat models for doxing, impersonation, account takeoverKanary's work with the federal DOJ, tech leaders, and the National Network of Abortion FundsActing as a "personal pen tester" for AI chatbots and LLMsRemoving harmful data from AI models via patches and retrainingGoing multimodal: images and video, not just textWhy removal alone isn't a strategy — pairing digital signals with physical securityLimits of DIY "email every data broker" approachesFounder lessons: hiring right, rejecting hyper-growth myths, letting go of regretGuest: Rachel Vrabec, Founder & CEO of Kanary Host: Den Jones, Founder & CEO of 909 CyberLinks: 909Shield: https://909shield.ai 909Cyber: https://909cyber.com Kanary: https://www.kanary.com/If you found value here, subscribe, rate, and share 909 Exec.#CyberSecurity #ExecutiveLeadership #AIPrivacy #Doxxing #Kanary #909ExecChapters: 00:00 Interview fraud & 909 Shield 00:48 Intro & guest setup 02:48 Childhood & early tech exposure 10:28 Joining IBM 16:39 Civis Analytics 20:54 2016 election targeting; big data to AI 29:17 Founding Kanary 34:15 AI, LLM risk & data removal 37:14 Going multimodal & physical security 42:53 Why "delete my data" doesn't work 44:01 Founder lessons & letting go of baggage