The countdown is on for Global Security Exchange (GSX) 2026. From 14 -16 September, the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta will host the annual flagship event of ASIS International and the most comprehensive gathering of security professionals anywhere in the world. With attendees from 100 nations, GSX is less a conference than a full recalibration of how the industry thinks, operates, and prepares for what comes next. This year, attendees can look forward to more than 200 education sessions, organized across tracks that reflect the full spectrum of modern security challenges.
For a sneak peek at what's in store, we caught up with Chris Klossner, Director of Intelligence and Special Projects at Convoy Group LLC to learn more about his upcoming session: The Social Media Threat Cycle: Detecting, Triaging, and Operationalizing Intelligence Before It Hits Your Door.
How did you become interested in this topic?
CK: My background in intelligence goes back to 1999 when I joined the Army as an Intelligence Analyst. From the beginning, I saw firsthand how collected information — refined into actionable intelligence — directly shapes decisions on the battlefield. When I became a Green Beret in 2006, that lens widened significantly. I was the guy building target packets from SIGINT, IMINT, and HUMINT, and then going in the door on the mission. The stakes of getting it right couldn't have been higher.
When I retired in 2019 and transitioned into the private sector — working as an EP Agent, in crisis management, a DoD security contractor, and now as Director of Intelligence and Special Projects at Convoy Group — I was struck by how much actionable intelligence is hiding in plain sight on social media. You can piece together open-source information from various platforms and essentially recreate those same target packets I built in the military. Twenty-seven years working in intelligence has shown me the power of it, how it gets misused, and — most critically — what happens when it gets ignored.
Tell us about your presentation and why security professionals should have this topic on their radar.
CK: Social media is today's town hall. It has replaced the watercooler, the rumor mill, the street corner — and it now governs how people form perceptions and, increasingly, how they act on them. What my presentation drives home is this: almost every incident leaks or signals on social media before it occurs. The information is there. The challenge is that most security professionals struggle to separate signal from noise, and many don't yet have a framework for moving from a post they've seen a decision they need to make.
This session walks attendees through that entire cycle — detecting what matters, triaging it against real threat indicators, and operationalizing the intelligence before it reaches your door. The goal is to move practitioners from reactive to proactive, because by the time you're reacting, you're already behind.
What advice would you give security professionals interested in this topic?
CK: First, don't assume you need an expensive monitoring platform before you understand the fundamentals. Tools help, but they won't save you if you haven't done the foundational work first.
Start by understanding your own threat profile: who would realistically target your organization, and where do those people congregate online? That determines which platforms and channels actually matter for your environment. Then learn to navigate those spaces manually — understand what information is significant and what is just noise. From there, study pre-incident behavior: leakage, grievance escalation, target fixation. Once you know what you're looking for, you'll start seeing it. That's when the tools become genuinely useful — because you know how to use them.
How do you see this issue evolving in the next 2-5 years?
CK: The surface area is only going to grow. New platforms will continue to emerge, and threat actors will increasingly migrate toward anonymous message boards and encrypted apps — Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, Wire — while using AI to cover their digital tracks through VPNs, sock puppet accounts, and overseas servers. The anonymity tools are getting better and more accessible.
That said, human nature doesn't change. People have an inherent need to tell someone. That need will always create a signal, even if it's buried in coded language or pushed to a fringe platform. And with younger generations who are deeply embedded in social media culture — where follower counts, likes, and reach are social currency — the volume of that signal is only increasing. Social media has also flattened global communications, making it the fastest and easiest way to spread an ideology or organize around a grievance. This problem is not going away. The practitioners who build the skills now will be well ahead of the curve.
Why do you attend GSX?
CK: GSX is, in my view, the most important security conference there is. Other events specialize in specific verticals, but GSX brings the entire profession together under one roof. I attend every year to network with practitioners across disciplines, get a real pulse on what topics are driving the industry, identify where the gaps still exist, and — honestly — to talk security and intelligence with people who are just as interested in these problems as I am. I'm an intel geek at heart, and GSX is where I get to be around a few thousand of them.
To learn more about GSX and to register, visit here.
