Location:KnowBe4โs Leeds office, 1 Leeds City Office Park, Meadow Lane, LS11 5BD
Start date:01/10/2026
End date:01/10/2026
Event Organiser:KnowBe4
More information
Web:https://leedsdigitalfestival.org/events/who-do-you-trust/
KnowBe4 will host a breakfast briefing on Thursday, October 1 as part of Leeds Digital Festival 2026. The event brings together cybersecurity and business from across Yorkshire and the North of England to examine one of the defining questions of the AI era: who, and what, can organisations trust? It’s limited to 30 attendees, with CISOs, IT leaders, security practitioners and business decision makers encouraged to register early.
The briefing marks the start of Cybersecurity Awareness Month and forms part of Leeds Digital Festival 2026, which returns from September 21 to October 2 with more than 200 free technology events across the region.
As AI becomes embedded into everyday business processes, organisations now operate with a workforce consisting of humans and AI agents. Both can influence decisions, access information and interact with business systems, creating new questions around trust, oversight and security.
The morningโs keynote will see Javvad Malik, lead CISO advisor at KnowBe4, reveal the results of a real-world experiment that began with a disputed parking ticket. In โThe Parking Ticket, The Paperwork, and the AI that Said โYesโโ, Malik will demonstrate how, in less than 48 hours, AI could be used to help create credible documentation and a digital presence that automated systems treated as legitimate. The experiment raises a much bigger question for businesses: what happens when AI systems reinforce questionable assumptions rather than challenge them?
Malik will explore how these same mechanics could translate into enterprise risk as organisations increasingly incorporate AI into workflows, approvals and decision making, and why human judgement remains critical as people begin working alongside autonomous systems.
โAI is rapidly becoming part of how organisations decide what is real, what is legitimate and what should be trusted,โ said Malik. โThe problem is that AI can be extremely convincing without necessarily being right. As organisations give these systems greater influence over business processes, we need to think carefully about where human judgement fits and how attackers could exploit that trust. The workforce is now a combination of people and AI agents, and our approach to security has to reflect that reality.โ
James Dyer, head of threat intelligence at KnowBe4, will provide a briefing on the latest phishing threat landscape, examining how AI-generated content, phishing-as-a-service and multi-channel social engineering are changing attacker tactics. Dyer will explore why phishing can no longer be viewed purely as an email problem, how attackers are adapting to security controls, and what organisations can do to better prepare their workforce for emerging social engineering techniques.
The event will begin with breakfast and networking from 8:30am and conclude at 11am.
