Summit Talk: Building Custom Agents That Survive First Contact
With Hayden Covington
August 14 @ 11:30 am – 11:55 am ET
What if the problem with AI in security is not that teams need better prompts, but that we keep asking general-purpose assistants to survive workflows they were never designed for?
In this session, Hayden Covington, Associate Director of Security Operations at the BHIS SOC, will walk through how to design custom agents for real security operations work: triage support, detection engineering, enrichment workflows, reporting, research, and review-heavy operational tasks. The focus is not magic prompts or over-engineered instructions; it is the engineering work behind useful agents. Powerful agents have clear roles, bounded authority, durable memory, tool access, handoff points, review gates, and failure modes that operators can actually relate to.
Attendees will leave with a practical design model for building agents that make an impact with minimal prompting effort, accelerate workflows without hiding risk, and fit into the way security teams already work. The goal is to move from prompt experimentation to repeatable agent design that can survive real operational pressure.
Chat with your fellow AI Summit attendees in the Antisyphon Discord server: https://discord.gg/antisyphon
This talk is part of Antisyphon Training’s Infosec: Age of AI Summit, a free, six-hour, live virtual event designed to give you a practical, real-world look at how cyber experts are using AI and what security professionals need to know as adoption grows.
For those who want to go further, high-quality, affordable hands-on workshops are available Aug. 17-18 to help you learn AI security concepts, techniques, and tactics.
See the entire Antisyphon Training Course Catalog for affordable cybersecurity training!
About the Instructor
Hayden Covington
Bio
Hayden Covington is a Security Operations leader, Detection Engineer, and Instructor who serves as the Associate Director of Security Operations at Black Hills Information Security. With nearly a decade of hands-on experience in Security Operations, Detection Engineering, and Incident Response, he specializes in building and running high-performing blue teams.
Hayden began his security career as a SOC Analyst at Newport News Shipbuilding (Huntington Ingalls Industries), where he worked on the incident response team and later focused on insider threat analysis and SOAR engineering. At BHIS, Hayden leads detection engineering efforts, develops and operationalizes threat intelligence processes, and oversees day-to-day SOC operations across a diverse customer base. His work centers on designing high-fidelity detections, reducing analyst noise, and building workflows that allows defenders move quickly and confidently during investigations.
