Youssef El Maddarsi, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer of Naoris Protocol, joins us live from the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange to discuss the future of cybersecurity in an increasingly complex digital world. He explains how resilience in 2026 has evolved beyond traditional perimeter defense into continuous validation, decentralized infrastructure, and quantum-ready systems. Youssef highlights the growing risks enterprises face, particularly the dangers of single points of failure, and emphasizes the need for organizations to rethink how they secure their networks by leveraging decentralization and trust-based frameworks. The conversation also explores the rising influence of nation-state cyber threats, the urgency of preparing for a post-quantum world, and how artificial intelligence is both a powerful defense tool and a rapidly evolving threat vector. From polymorphic attacks to infrastructure outages, Youssef outlines why businesses must prioritize identity security, adopt post-quantum cryptography, and continuously verify system integrity. Looking ahead, he shares how innovations in blockchain and decentralized validation could redefine cybersecurity—ensuring trust, resilience, and protection across every layer of digital infrastructure.
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Joining me live here at the New York Stock Exchange is Youssef El Maddarsi, co-founder and chief business officer of Naoris Protocol.
Youssef great to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you for having me.
Well, cybersecurity used to be considered something that was purely defensive, so what does resilience actually look like in 2026?
Today, I would say that resilience is no longer a perimeter around your infrastructure, but should be continuous validation.
Quantum readiness and business continuity above all, and that comes with first and foremost being able to trust continuously your infrastructure.
Yes, and when we think about enterprises and the challenges that they face in this day and age, what would you say to them are the top priorities that they should be focusing on?
I would say first of all they should decentralize their surface of risk in the sense they should leverage their infrastructure to protect them and not what is currently happening in most systems.
Today in systems you have what we call a single point of failure.
That means if I'm an attacker I attack one device and take over everything.
That's no longer resilient and it's not working.
This is why we see the costs of cyber increasing so much.
Yeah, and when we take a look at cybersecurity, the role that nation states play, we know that the White House just released its three-page strategy.
So give us your key takeaways from that.
My key takeaways is that we're going into what we call a post-quantum world.
That means there's going to be a quantum singularity event happening within the next few years.
Now, in my world, we like to joke and say that every day we're 6 months closer to that event.
And once that's there, we will need to have everything running on post quantum cryptography, and this is something that the White House strategy has emphasized on massively, and that includes everything from infrastructure to network to identities.
Everything should be posted.
And while I have you here, Yusuf, I do want to ask you about the role of artificial intelligence here on Wall Street.
Of course we're paying attention to how AI affects all industries of the listed companies here, but give us your take on the role that artificial intelligence plays in cybersecurity.
AI can be an ally and can be again a vector of massive threats.
Today you have what we call polymorphic threats that through AI.
That means that a threat changes continuously as it evolves in attacking scenarios.
So again, I will go back to what I said.
We need to be able to trust our infrastructure through decentralization, quantum cryptography, and validate continuously integrity of devices, network systems, and health of the node.
And in this hyperconnected world we know that there are many risks out there, but I do want to get your take on the risks that outages actually pose.
So what can businesses do?
Businesses should first of all adopt a post-quantum framework in the sense, maybe start with protecting their identities because identity is the root of every single risk in cyber.
Then move into their communication systems, namely VPN, TLS, system to system communication, and finish with endpoints.
But again, I can't emphasize on that enough.
Trust should be the core, and you should be able to trust your infrastructure through trust consensus.
And finally, before I let you go, we have less than 60 seconds here.
So finally, in terms of innovations when it comes to cybersecurity, what are you looking at and why?
What are we looking at?
We're looking at how to solve what we call the single point of failure, which is inherited by every single system today.
We're looking at doing that through blockchain and decentralization.
Now people use that technology simply for validating transactions.
What we think it should be used for is to validate integrity and state of devices, hardware, firmware, software, digital processes, all data across its life cycle.
So that's half of it.
The other half is post quantum cryptography.
We believe, well, quantum is coming just like meteors strike the Earth back then and extinguished dinosaurs.
If we're not ready for that, it's back to the stone age.
No one can afford that, really.
Well, Youssef we will have to leave it there as we are approaching the market open here at the New York Stock Exchange.
So thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you for having me.
My pleasure.