Agent Hackers Never Stop: Vincent Pilette on AI Threats and Digital Freedom

November 12, 2026

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About the Guest

Vincent Pilette

Board Chair & Chief Executive Officer

Vincent Pilette is the Chief Executive Officer of Gen, a global company dedicated to powering Digital Freedom through its trusted brands, Norton, Avast, LifeLock, and MoneyLion. In 2019, Vincent was appointed CEO of NortonLifeLock, renamed Gen after the acquisition of Avast. As CEO, Vincent led the separation of the consumer assets of Symantec and their transformation into NortonLifelock, the global leader in consumer Cyber Safety. Vincent directed and implemented a two-prong strategy that led to the acquisition of Avast in 2022 and the formation of Gen. In 2024, Vincent led the second phase of the strategy with the acquisition of MoneyLion and the creation of the Secure Financial Wellness business within Gen. As a result of the expansion strategy, Gen now provides consumer cyber safety and trust-based solutions to more than 500 million users in more than 150 countries. Before Gen, Vincent earned more than 20 years of senior operating and financial experience in the technology sector, with positions at Logitech, Electronics-For-Imaging, and Hewlett-Packard. Vincent serves as Board Chair for Gen and is on the board of directors of SonicWall, a cyber security company for small and medium businesses.

Episode Overview

AI-powered “agent hackers” work continuously, exploit known vulnerabilities at scale, and can move money or make purchases on a consumer’s behalf before anyone notices. Vincent Pilette, CEO of Gen Digital, explains how the company behind Norton, LifeLock, and Avast is responding: platformizing its stack, acquiring MoneyLion to extend from protection into financial wellness, and building Norton Genie as a security agent that filters what autonomous AI agents are allowed to do.

Pilette traces Gen’s evolution from point products to a membership model (Norton 360 reached 65% install-base adoption within 12–18 months) and addresses the engagement paradox at the heart of consumer security: the best outcome is silence, which makes the product nearly invisible by design.

Key Highlights:

Why 90-plus percent of consumer threats are now scams and phishing, layered on top of malware that never went away
How agentic AI changes attack economics by exploiting previously known but ignored vulnerabilities at scale
The customer-behavior logic behind acquiring MoneyLion: surveys showed consumers wanted Gen to move from protection to financial empowerment
How Norton 360’s membership model reached 65% install-base adoption in 12-18 months by collapsing point products into one offer
Why the ideal security outcome (you hear nothing) is structurally hostile to engagement, and how Gen is evolving toward an action loop that detects, verifies, and pays

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