Cloud migration and remote work requirements are forcing organizations to modernize their applications and identity systems. Making the transition is both time-consuming and expensive using traditional software development practices. By decoupling applications from identity, orchestration can alleviate the burden while allowing companies to seamlessly mix and match different cloud providers as well as MFA and passwordless technologies. In this episode, Eric Olden, Co-founder and CEO at Strata...

Recent cybersecurity workforce study reports reveal that a) there’s still a global shortage of 3.4 million workers in this field, and b) only 25% of the global cybersecurity workforce are women. In this episode, I had an engaging discussion with panelists Ashley Podhradsky, Vice President of Research and Economic Development at Dakota State University, and Kriti Arora, Security Global black belt, Threat Intelligence and External Attack Surface Management, Microsoft, North America, on...

Research finds that there was a 44% increase in insider threat incidents across all types of organizations, and 56% of the reported incidents were due to negligence. Equally alarming is that the average annual cost to remediate a negligence incident was $6.6 million. Dr. Eric Lang, Ph.D., Director, Personnel and Security Research Center (PERSEREC), United States Department of Defense, draws upon his research to share some of the (science-based) commandments for understanding and countering...

Significant fines in excess of $2 billion have been levied on organizations in the financial services sector for failing to capture, retain and supervise communications. This crackdown on non-compliant communications is the clearest indicator yet that regulators have lost patience with firms that still haven't addressed supervision and record-keeping risks that were exacerbated by the pandemic. In this episode, Garth Landers, Director of Global Product Marketing at Theta Lake, discusses how...

Traditional authentication methods are outdated and need many layers of code, which can take time and resources away from developer teams. If developments like FIDO2, WebAuthn, and passkeys are to be the cornerstones of a passwordless future, then every application (not just Apple, Google, and Microsoft) needs an easy way to adopt these methods and weave them into current user authentication flows. Slavik Markovich, Co-founder and CEO, Descope, discusses current and future authentication...

It is well known that a proactive intelligence-driven approach to cyber governance is the way to go. But it is easier said than done. Embracing and sustaining such an approach requires high commitment, preparedness, and discipline. Kriti Arora, Security Global Black Belt, Threat Intelligence and Enterprise Attack Surface Management, Microsoft, shares her experiences guiding clients to adopt an intelligence-driven proactive approach to thwarting attacks. She also shares her passion for the...

“While developed markets may today bear the brunt of cyber breaches, emerging markets are no less vulnerable. Their risks arise from weak processes and governance, the complexity of global supply chains, the need to remain low cost to attract investment, and the rapid adoption of technology without adequate cyber defenses.” Andre Keartland, Solutions Architect at Netsurit, Johannesburg, South Africa, speaks to these realities and offers guidance on managing cyber risks and implementing robust...

In this episode, Pamela Senegal, President, Piedmont Community College, shares several best practices, including having an information technology presence in each of the college-wide committees. I had the pleasure of meeting Pamela at a cybersecurity symposium organized by the World View Program at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Charle LaMonica, the Director of UNC's World View Program, also shared her thoughts and perspectives during this very engaging discussion. Driven by...

In this episode, Brian Penders, Chief Information Security Officer, at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Medical School, shares his exciting but challenging journey from working as an engineering lab technician in the US nuclear submarine to being a law enforcement officer with the Vermont State Police and then gravitating to his current role of Chief Information Security Officer at a major academic institution. He sheds light on the principles driving the high-reliability...

Clinical psychologist Beatrice Cadet, Scientist Integrator at Netherland's Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), draws upon multiple concepts such as 'learned helplessness' to explain why people still fall for phishing attacks despite the training. Beatrice emphasizes the need to factor in human behavioral traits and motivational triggers when developing social engineering solutions and training. Time Stamps 00:49 -- Please share some highlights of your professional...

In this episode, Patricia Muoio, Ph.D., Partner at SineWave Ventures and Former Chief of Trusted Systems Research Group, National Security Agency, sheds light on the cybersecurity technology landscape and emphasizes the need to develop technologies that are attack agnostic. Some of the questions driving the discussion include: a) what progress has been made in the development and use of cybersecurity technologies? b) What does it mean to be attack agnostic? c) how near or far are we from...

Threat modeling is an intrinsic part of information security governance and needs to be done well. However, research finds that many organizations don't do it well, some are pretty haphazard or chaotic in their approach. In this episode, Marcos Lira, Lead Solutions Engineer at Halo Security, sheds light on how to do threat modeling the right way. The key questions driving the discussion were: a) what is the scope and purpose of threat modeling? b) what have people and organizations been...

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recently (Oct 31, 2022) released fact sheets urging all organizations to implement phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication (MFA). In this episode, George Gerchow, Chief Security Officer and Senior Vice President of IT, Sumo Logic, and I have an in-depth discussion on this very important security subject matter. The scope of coverage ranges from providing an overview of MFA and its benefits to discussing the challenges and...

A recent Global SMB Ransomware survey finds that nearly half of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have experienced a ransomware attack, yet the majority aren't sure they are a target, and most are not confident they can fend off such an attack. Since 60% of SMBs are known to go out of business within six months of being hacked, it is a very troubling state of affairs. In this episode, Grayson Milbourne, Security Intelligence Director at OpenText Security Solutions, joins me in...

In this episode, Kal Sambhangi, Senior Vice President, Cybersecurity Strategy and Architecture at Truist, shares his vision of the future of cyber governance. According to him, the leadership mindset needs to change whereby they are optimistic and opportunistic about cybersecurity and view developing cybersecurity capabilities as a source of competitive advantage. Kal also emphasized the importance of attracting professionals from other fields. He said, “I think cyber security as a community...

Comprehensive asset discovery is foundational to robust and proactive cybersecurity governance. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency recently issued a directive (BOD 23-01) requiring federal enterprises (civilian executive branch) to perform automated asset discovery every 7 days. Among other things, the directive also requires federal enterprises to initiate vulnerability enumeration across all discovered assets, including all discovered nomadic/roaming devices (e.g.,...

In a highly engrossing and in-depth discussion, Tej Patel, Vice President, and CIO at Stevens Institute of Technology sheds light on the various information security challenges that plague academic institutions and how best to deal with them. He talks about establishing a highly collaborative and security-centric culture, structuring an ideal CIO-CISO relationship, effective execution strategies, and more. Time Stamps 01:57 Why don't you give listeners an overview of your professional...

As more organizations embrace cloud-based services, securely migrating to the cloud is becoming an important capability. Keith Weller, former Vice President, Enterprise Technology Services, American Cancer Society (ACS), spearheaded a highly successful migration initiative where they transitioned a 5000-square-foot donation processing on-premise data center to the cloud. Keith and his team completed the implementation on time (in eight weeks), under budget, and helped the organization...

Insider threats are often considered the biggest risk for organizations because they can cause the most destruction. Survey reports, and studies, have found that organizations have spent millions of dollars to recover from insider threat attacks. Proactively detecting and thwarting such threats is a critical aspect of robust information security governance. Doron Hendler, CEO, and Co-Founder at RevealSecurity, sheds light on a context-based detection model that analyzes activity sequences...

The Security Operations Center (SOC) is at the heart of an organization's cyber defense system. Highly skilled and motivated personnel must work in these centers. James Risler, Senior Manager, Cisco Learning and Certifications, discussed the roles of the security engineer and the security analyst and the hard and soft skills needed to be effective in those functions. While the ability to code, learn computer forensics techniques, and know how to operationalize MITRE attacks are top skills,...

Daniela Almeida Lourenco, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Tinka, firmly believes that CISOs have the very best of intentions -- "we all mean the best; we all want to protect the organization, and that is all we want to do." However, often the reality of the Board's lack of a cybersecurity mindset coupled with insufficient budget and resources results "in a reactive posture, unpreparedness, unclear risk management strategy, and low response maturity." She also highlights "the...

With the growing move towards a hybrid and remote work environment, more and more people are relying on their smart devices to get work done. Keeping track of all of these devices, and ensuring that they are being used in a very secure manner, can be a challenging proposition. A recent survey finds organizations unprepared and overwhelmed with managing thousands or hundreds of thousands of these endpoint devices. Mike McNeill, CEO, Fleet Device Management, sheds light on some of these...

With increasing digitization and the use of cloud-hosted assets, managing attack surfaces continues to be a major challenge. A recent survey report on the state of attack surface management (ASM) finds security teams drowning in a flood of legacy and ineffective tools with limited discovery capabilities. The need for ASM platforms with advanced digital asset detection capabilities is revealed in the survey findings. David Monnier, Team Cymru Fellow, sheds light on the latest ASM platform...

"If you can plan for the zombie apocalypse, you can probably face just about anything," said Tim Callahan, Senior Vice President, and Global Chief Information Security Officer, Aflac during a talk in my Master's level class on cybersecurity readiness at Duke University. In this podcast, Tim describes the key elements of an effective crisis management framework and shares several best practices. Some of the highlights of a robust business resiliency and recovery posture include -- a) well...

Security Operating Center (SOC) staff members are often consumed with tedious manual tasks that lead to burnout and can cost organizations millions of dollars in losses due to human error. Thomas Kinsella, Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer at Tines discusses at length the challenges faced by SOC team members and makes actionable recommendations on how to decrease burnouts, increase retention, and create a better work environment for the security analysts. Time Stamps 01:26 -- So,...