Membership Meeting 09/23/2026
Chapter Business Meeting Slides: TBD
Speaker Slides: TBD
Topic: Behaviors as Artifacts
Cybersecurity has traditionally treated software as something to be identified. Hashes, file names, extensions, certificates, and other metadata have become the artifacts we collect, store, and reason about. While these attributes are valuable, they answer only one question: What is this? They tell us very little about what it does.
The same is true when describing a person. We can list their height, hair color, occupation, or where they live, but those characteristics don’t tell us who they really are. Identity is ultimately expressed through behavior: how someone thinks, acts, adapts, and responds to the world around them. Software is no different.
Every application, script, or binary exhibits a unique set of behaviors that can be derived through static analysis, dynamic execution, or both. Those behaviors extend beyond the concept of a traditional fingerprint. They become behavioral artifacts that capture intent, capability, and function rather than simply appearance.
This shift fundamentally changes how we reason about software. Instead of asking, “Have I seen this file before?” we can begin asking, “Have I seen this behavior before?” or even, “Does this behavior belong in my environment?” That perspective moves cybersecurity beyond signatures and reputation toward understanding software by how it acts, regardless of its name, hash, or origin.
As advances in compute and AI make behavioral analysis possible at unprecedented scale, defenders have an opportunity to build behavioral catalogs that continuously learn, correlate, and contextualize software activity across an environment. These catalogs can reveal emerging threats, detect changes in trusted software, identify anomalous behavior, and provide a deeper understanding of the operational health of modern systems.
The future of cyber defense may not be defined by identifying more files, but by understanding more behaviors. As behaviors become artifacts themselves, they have the potential to redefine how we classify software, detect threats, and reason about the increasingly complex digital ecosystems we are responsible for protecting.
Speaker: Jared Sladich, Senior Solutions Engineer, CodeHunter
Jared Sladich is a cybersecurity expert with deep specialization in automated malware analysis, threat visibility, and technology integration. He works at the intersection of technical depth and practical application, helping security teams move beyond the limitations of manual reverse engineering to identify and understand advanced threats faster.
His expertise was built over a career spanning the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, and the commercial cybersecurity industry. He began as a Human Intelligence Collector in the United States Army, then branched out into digital forensics and cyber threat intelligence work before progressing into senior technical roles where he built various data analysis and email security products. That foundation in intelligence collection and forensics continues to shape how he approaches malware analysis and threat intelligence today. Across each of these roles, Jared has honed a rare combination of skills: the analytical rigor of intelligence tradecraft paired with hands-on technical fluency in modern threat analysis.
That same hands-on expertise carries into every conversation where he shares it regularly with SOC and MSSP audiences at industry events like Black Hat USA, Pax8 Beyond, and regional Cybersecurity Summits.
