There’s no avoiding it, the headlines have not been kind to the ways we access systems today. Users are still using 1234, password, and even their dog's name. Not just using these weak passwords but also reusing them across multiple platforms, making it incredibly easy to breach someone once they’ve been caught up in a previous breach. On the vendor side, well we all know what’s happened there in the past 12 months, and now more than ever, password management platforms have growing targets on...

For many, cybersecurity is seen as a cost center that reduces risk to the business. This can be oversimplified to something akin to how HR reduces people-related risks but comes with layer on top of layer of complexities ranging from technology to physical buildings and, of course, people. Regardless of organizational size, cybersecurity leadership requires a top-down approach, leaving room for discussion at the board level and aligning it with business goals. This week on AZT, Neal and I...

For more than a decade, Zero Trust as a concept has moved from a philosophy and now into a practical architecture and strategy that organizations can adopt. While Zero Trust encapsulates much of what has gone well in cybersecurity for the past 30 years or so, does it truly offer an innovative approach or just iterative change? Is the concept positioned well so others can adapt it to their needs and prevent greater cyber-related risks? While we know it’s certainly not a silver bullet, and use...

This week on AZT, we chat about something timely and impactful to everyone in the cybersecurity and users impacted by related decisions: the new National Cybersecurity Strategy (full strategy here). Our guests this week are Tony Scott and Ilona Cohen, both industry powerhouses and experts well-equipped to navigate this complex document.   Ilona Cohen is the former General Counsel at Office of Management and Budget (OMB), was an Associate White House Counsel and Special Assistant to the...

This week Neal and I continue with our exploration of new formats, and this time we go one-on-one with the Founder and CEO of Netfoundry, Galeal Zino. Prior to Netfoundry, Zino spent much of his career traversing R&D, and later moving into a key role for Tata Communications.  Though Netfoundry’s bread and butter is a Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solution that can be built into other technology via API and even supports IoT systems, and they also manage OpenZiti. OpenZiti is an...

Zero Trust as a concept or strategy on the surface appears simple in nature. Heck, it’s only two words. However, when push comes to shove, and it’s time for organizational adoption, Zero Trust impacts every aspect of a business in the form of a digital transformation. Fortunately, for every complexity and question, there is an answer and solution, which is where our latest guest comes into play. This week on Adopting Zero Trust (AZT), we chat with infosec author, practitioner, and educator...

This week we have a two-for-one special and feature our newest panel-style format. On the practitioner side, we have crowd favorite Andrew Abel, who currently works with a financial institution, but has worked across multiple other industries in the past. On the Zero Trust technology side, we have Michael Loewy, Co-Founder of Tide Foundation.  Tide Foundation lives between authentication and micro-segmentation, or if we look at CISA’s Foundation of Zero Trust principles: identity,...

This week we chat with Ismael Valenzuela, VP of Threat Intel at Blackberry, a 13-year SANS instructor, and has balanced his time between educator and practitioner for decades. Before peppering Ismael with our usual questions and falling down the rabbit hole, we dug a bit deeper into his background and what drives him to split his time between educating peers and working for some of the biggest names in tech. On the docket for this week is Zero Trust as a philosophy, why Less Trust is a more...

Welcome to the last episode of season one, where Neal and I go on a rambling adventure and look back on some of the interesting and eye-opening conversations we’ve had over the past few months. To wrap things up, and what was supposed to be a 20-minute conversation, we felt it was time to better introduce ourselves to our listeners, discuss some plans for season two, highlight perhaps some aspirations of bringing AZT into the real world at a conference or two in 2023, and that we will finally...

This week we chat with Chase Cunningham, Doctor Zero Trust himself, about the decade-overnight success of Zero Trust, how he got involved with the concept, and methods for navigating vendors wanting to shape the concept. For those initiated into the world of Zero Trust, you are no doubt familiar with his podcast, regular LinkedIn musings, and history as a Forrester analyst. Beyond the podcast, Chase is the CSO for Ericom Software, has a long history in threat intel, and built a significant...

This week we chatted with Chris Reinhold, Director of Innovation at Core BTS, a managed security service provider (MSSP) and IT consulting firm. We dig into the long-awaited answer to our previous call, pen testing Zero Trust systems. Plus, we chat about the idea of Zero Trust as a certification and the always relevant factoid that compliance is not security.

This week we chat with J. R. Cunningham, Chief Security Officer at Nuspire, and we dig into Zero Trust as a journey. Nuspire is a managed security service provider that provides support ranging from managed detection and response (MDR), endpoint detection, vulnerability management, and of course supporting their customers with adopting Zero Trust. This week we chat about unpacking the idea of Zero Trust when a brand wants to pursue it, the increasing threats targeting the automotive industry,...

This week we chat with Maureen Rosado, a Zero Trust Strategist for BT, who has an outstanding history of business development for enterprise companies like IBM and Microsoft. This week we break away from our norms of the technical ins and outs of Zero Trust, and take a look at the ideal way to consult and coach security teams through the process of adopting Zero Trust. For those who have been on the receiving end of cyber security solution pitches, and there are twice as many wrong ways as...

This week we chat with Christine Owen, Director at Guidehouse, and we dig into Zero Trust as an approach to harden your identity and access management strategy, her dislike of passwords, and phishing-resistant multifactor authentification. Christine brings to the table the expertise of an IAM (identity and access management) pro and an attorney, who currently consults and educates federal departments and commercial enterprise organizations on IAM and Zero Trust. Get the full recap on...

This week we chat with Bryan Willett, Lexmark’s CISO, who has built a legacy over the past 25 years working for the global company. Starting from his early days as a firmware developer, transitioning into managing teams and projects, and now as the CISO, Bryan has built a long-standing successful career. During our chat, we talk about how security professionals can advance their careers from protecting products and users and converting that into business language that CISOs navigate on a...

This week we chat with Dom Glavach, Chief Security Officer (CSO) of CyberSN (Cyber Security Network) and a security consultant, and we dig into Zero Trust as a journey, the delta between buzzwords and tool upgrades, and the hunt for red teams focused on prodding Zero Trust architectures. For those unfamiliar with CyberSN, they connect cybersecurity professionals to in-demand jobs and have some of the best visibility into hiring trends and how/if Zero Trust is being staffed up for. Be sure to...

Nicolas Chaillan is an Entrepreneur who became a US citizen about six years ago, and immediately joined the DHS where he became the chief architect and special advisor for cyber, leading him to become the first chief software officer for Space Force where he led the shift to DevSecOps for DoD and at the time implementation of Zero Trust. Prior to Space Force, Nic funded 12 tech companies, they built more than 187 products, which were then sold across 45 Fortunate 500 companies. Now, in his...

This week we chat with Ryan Alford, Founder and CEO of Engineering Design Group (EDG), and we dig into how Zero Trust impacts the future of hardware, software, IoT, and access (both human and machine). EDG provides distributed sensor monitoring through a cloud-based solution and associated hardware for organizations with critical data needs. As a hardware manufacturer, that also provides software with important data sets, they have a double edge sword to consider when securing their...

This week we chat with Andrew Abel, our defacto Zero Trust expert who is currently the EUC Cyber Security Strategy and Architecture Lead for an energy company out of Brisbane Australia. Andrew has been involved with Zero Trust for some time, holds Forrester’s Zero Trust certification, and has an extensive background with solutions architecture and identity management, both of which play significant roles in the adopting of Zero Trust.

Today, Zero Trust is a fuzzy term with more than a dozen different definitions. Threat Analyst Neal Dennis and Cybersecurity Journalist Elliot Volkman set off on a journey to get a better understanding of Zero Trust and what it truly offers. Is Zero Trust a concept, a strategy, framework, set of technology, or perhaps a mix of each? Each episode Neal and Elliot will chat with those adopting, implementing, and pushing Zero Trust forward without the vendor hype.

Today, Zero Trust is a fuzzy term with more than a dozen different definitions. We are on a mission to give a voice to cybersecurity practitioners and others who have been in these shoes, have begun adopting or implementing a Zero Trust strategy, and to share their experience and insight with peers while not influenced by vendor hype.