Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest today is Ankur Ahuja, 2x CISO, Ted-X Speaker, Startup Investor, Board Advisor, etc. etc.  Ankur is currently SVP and CISO at Billtrust, and he’s got some Big 4 in his DNA too (ten years, in fact!).  Ankur wanted to chat about how CISOs can drive business growth, so I asked him to come on down to the ‘Ranch and have a chat with me.   It's more than attending sales calls. It's more than security questionnaires   Listen for some...

Melanie Ensign is a communications strategist and corporate anthropologist for cybersecurity, privacy, and risk organizations.  She is founder and CEO of Discernible, a multi-disciplinary Center of Excellence for security, privacy, & risk teams. Her team includes experts in communications, product development and management, compliance, security and privacy engineering, and behavioral science. Melanie is here at the 'Ranch to talk specifically about the fact that so many CISOs feel they...

In this episode, Allan tackles the idea of selling the CISO mission. He deconstructs the types of CISOs and the "selling" they must do.  Sometimes you really are selling, but most of the time you should be solving business problems. Allan speaks to: Business objectives met Business risks reduced Maturity And also deconstructs the art of selling itself. Hint: Business Impact Analysis is a valuable tool in this whole process. Special thanks to Helen Patton and Melanie Ensign for prompting this...

Our guest this week is Jonathan Rau, VP and Distinguished Engineer over at Query, and a proponent of what he calls "SecDataOps".  Jonathan is quite active on LinkedIn and his takes, though often spicy, tend to be spot-on.  Allan has come to enjoy following Jonathan's posts, and he was excited to have Jonathan come on the show and share his insights. Allan asks Jonathan, in a VERY lively conversation: What is SecDataOps? What is its focal point? Who should be in charge? What skills are...

This is part two in our neurodiversity series.  Our guest roster this time also includes Dr. Ursula Alford, a psychologist who routinely works with the neurodiverse populace. The lineup of guests covers ADHD, Autism, challenges unique to women with neurodiversity, how leaders should manage neurodivergent team members and more. Y'all be good now!

Geoff Hancock is Deputy CEO and CISO for Access Point Consulting, Former Global Director and CISO over at World Wide Technology.  He’s also a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor at George Washington University and has held various C-suite and executive roles at Verizon, CGI Federal Advanced Technology, Microsoft, and Advanced Cybersecurity Group.  He is back at the 'Ranch this week to talk about CISO Communications. Allan asks Geoff: You say the first step is prioritizing clarity in...

Join Allan LIVE! at Zero Trust World in Orlando as he asks 12 guests "What does Zero Trust Mean to You?" and a wide variety of other questions. Conference highlights are discussed as well, including hacker activities, hacker demonstrations, incredible talks, etc. Allan also learns all about The Tech Degenerates, and organization furthering partnership and comradery amongst cybersecurity vendors, MSPs, MSSPs, CISOs, etc. (Allan has since joined their Discord group!) Another great highlight is...

How does cybersecurity relate to the four horsemen of the apocalypse?  Famine, Pestilence, War, and Death?  In this episode, Dr. Chase Cunningham, renowned Zero Trust expert, author, instructor, Chief Strategy Officer, advisor, etc., examines the 4 conditions on our planet represented by the four horsemen, ties it all to cybersecurity, and then solves it all with Zero Trust.  It's quite a ride and an adventure you should listen to! Allan tries to keep up in this episode that jumps from topic...

Howdy, y'all!  Allan went down to Orlando, Florida and recorded three LIVE! shows at Zero Trust World, a conference sponsored by ThreatLocker.  This is the first of those three shows.   James Keeler of LMT Technology Solutions has a steady hand on the incident response wheel and a lot of experience under his belt as well.  After seeing James speak on a panel at Zero Trust World, Allan asked him to be on the show.   Join Allan as he asks James to walk us through his philosophy of incident...

This week Allan is joined by Leigh Honeywell (CEO of Tall Poppy) Nathan Case (Federal CISO at Snyk), and Ryan Macababbad (Currently looking.  HIRE HER!), three cybersecurity professionals with broad backgrounds in cyber, and all three of whom are neurodivergent.   Allan in fact, has been recently diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, albeit 'high functioning' (as the diagnosis indicates) or 'low support needed' (as the autism community prefers to call it).   With his recent diagnosis,...

Fun fact:  There are more vulnerabilities and exploits below the OS layer than above it! CPUs, BIOS, Firmware, embedded Linux, FPGAs, UEFI, PXE...  The list goes on an on.  What are we supposed to do about that? Allan asked Yuriy to come down to the 'Ranch to discuss this issue with him.  Yuriy is CEO at Eclypsium, member of the Forbes Technology Counsel, Founder of the open source CHIPSEC project, former head of Threat Research at McAfee, form Senior Principle Engineer at Intel…  He is...

In this episode, Allan flies solo, as he is finally willing to speak on an issue he has been mulling and fussing over for some time:  the two-fold CISO laments of: "We have all the accountability and none of the authority!" "We don't own the risk - we advise the business" Allan is refuting both of these claims. Allan calls up examples such as project managers, contract lawyers, CFOs in his argument. He also demonstrates that we have far more authority than we think, and also that we can earn...

We declared a while back that 'not having a seat at the table' was a tired CISO topic.  So we decided to solution the complaint. Hopefully we pulled it off. Join Allan and Jim McConnell, Principal at Ask McConnell, LLC and former Fellow in Corporate Security Protection Operations at Verizon, as they take on the challenge of solving this common lament. There is a fierce round of "answer pong" as they throw out suggestions on how to earn that seat, but they also cover: What does it mean to have...

Pat Benoit, CISO at Brinks, returns to the 'Ranch to visit Allan and to chat about his newest achievement - Pat got a NACD Directorship Certification! Allan has often thought about doing this as well, so he got Pat on the mic to talk about his whole experience: Why did you do it? How hard was it? What was involved? What do you hope to get out of it? Did you farm around for alternatives? Is there more you plan to do? As topics for shows go, this one is short and sweet.  But Pat, as always,...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest is Ayman Elsawah, who, like Allan these days, is a fractional CISO and founder of his own security company.  He has done the fractional CISO thing many times.  He has also been a professor, a security consultant, and a cloud-specific security consultant.  His tenure includes eBay, NCC Group, Justworks and Masterclass.  Ayman and Allan are talking about how cybersecurity teams can integrate themselves with the rest of the...

This one was recorded LIVE! in Podcast Alley at the CyberMarketingCon 2023 put on by the Cybersecurity Marketing Society in Austin, Texas.   Marketing!?!!?  Say what!?!?   Yup!  Allan went down to Austin to catch up with industry players and to participate in the conference as a "creator", i.e., podcaster. While there Allan ran into his friend Tom LeDuc, CMO at Semperis, and he got Tom to hop on the mic with him to discuss leadership challenges such as conflict, territorialism, jurisdictional...

Howdy, y'all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest is Andrew Wilder, Retained CISO at Community Veterinary Partners, Member of the Board of Directors at Washington University in St. Louis, Advisory Board Member, former Global CISO, former Regional CISO... He's got a real history in this game.  What we're talking about today is retained, fractional, virtual, and part-time CISOing...   Topics addressed:   Challenge of vCISO - do i have a job 6 months from now? Marketing and sales...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast! Our guest this week is John Checco, aka "Checco", who is overdue for being on the show we freely admit!  John is a presence on LinkedIn and in our industry.  He’s the author of “Zero Trust: From Aspirational to Overdue”.  He’s also involved, as you can imagine, in many other things – various advisory roles, ISSA roles, Infraguard roles…  He’s been resident CISO at Proofpoint, for example.  He’s also a fire instructor!  But we asked John to...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest is Luke Jennings, VP of Research & Development at Push Security, former Chief Researcher at Countercept, Principle Security Consultant at MWR…  He’s been around the industry.  Luke is passionate about tracking the evolution of attacks – how are the bad guys morphing and changing their game in response to our new defenses, and more importantly, new technologies that we use in the first place.  Luke, thank you so much for...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest is Adam Bateman, CEO and Co-Founder at Push Security, based in the UK.  Another of our cyber friends from across the pond!  Is a former director at the security consultancy MWR who were renowned in the industry for their specialist research and red team capability. Adam started off as a red teamer himself, and then went on to build and lead the detection and response division of MWR, where they specialized in defending...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest is Geoff Hancock, Deputy CEO and CISO for Access Point Consulting, Former Global Director and CISO over at World Wide Technology.  He’s also a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor at George Washington University and has held various C-suite and executive roles at Verizon, CGI Federal Advanced Technology, Microsoft, and Advanced Cybersecurity Group.  Yup!  Another well-established guest.  But wait!  There’s more!  Geoff has been...

In this SPECIAL EDITION! Allan interviews the 3 CISOs who created the CISO XC series of conferences: Cecil Pineda Jaimin Shah Randy Potts CISO XC is the only conference for CISOs (and their reports) that is put on my a team of 3 CISOs and an awesome all-CISO advisory board. And the amount of money CISO XC gives to charity is MIND BOGGLING.  Hint:  This years's goal is greater than some CISO's salaries!!! In this brief SPECIAL EDITION! you can hear more about CISO XC, its take on it's 3...

Allan takes the show on the road again, this time at his all-time favorite conference: CISO XC! He asks a unique question of each guest, who represent a great deal of breadth in our industry: Dave Belanger, CISO at Bestow Insurance - What is the most effective way to demonstrate and communicate security program progress to the board? Tera Davis, CEO at CyberOne Security – How does a vendor forge relationships with a customer to be a strategic advisor and not just another vendor? Andrew Woolen...

Howdy, y'all!  Allan is taking this week off to spend time with family and to give thanks for all the wonderful things in his life - including y'all! For those who don't track it, there is no Cyber Ranch Podcast four times  a year: American Thanksgiving week Christmas week Black Hat week RSA week That gives Allan enough breaks throughout the year to preserve his sanity. Y'all be good now!