Crossbeam CISO Chris Castaldo on securing the start-up

April 23rd, 2021  |  32 mins 10 secs

career guidance, compliance, privacy, security, startup

Chris Castaldo has a fascinating career in cybersecurity. A U.S. army veteran who dabbled in tech during the early 2000s dot-com boom before settling on security, Castaldo is now CISO at Crossbeam and a decision-maker with a bird's eye view into how the should be protected.

Castaldo joins Ryan on the show to talk about his new book on securing the startup, why he's the rare CISO that loves security vendor briefings and demos, and his vision of the CISO's top priorities.

Shubs Shah on finding riches (and lessons) from bug bounty hacking

April 20th, 2021  |  52 mins 49 secs

bug bounties, continuous testing, h2c smuggling, pen-testing, security assessments, web app security

Shubham Shah is a brilliant hacker who quit his pen-testing job to hack for cash in bug-bounty programs. He quickly mastered the game of automating automating pre-breach reconnaissance and zero in on common webapp programming and configuration errors. Shubs, now co-founder at Assetnote, joined Ryan on the show to talk about the stressful life of a fulltime bug-bounty hunter, advancements in web app security defense, and how automation is completely rewriting the bug-discovery business.

Fahmida Rashid, Executive Editor, VentureBeat

April 9th, 2021  |  37 mins 2 secs

investments, journalism, news gathering, story-telling, venture capital, writing

Newly appointed Executive Editor at VentureBeat Fahmida Rashid joins the show to talk about her introduction to computer networking in school, her winding path into cybersecurity journalism, the security stories worth telling, the venture capital ecosystem, and the surge in unicorn cybersecurity startups.

Microsoft's David Weston on the surge in firmware attacks

April 6th, 2021  |  33 mins 6 secs

bios, eclypsium, firmware, iot, microsoft, security updates, uefi, windows os

Microsoft's David Weston joins Ryan on the show to discuss a new report that shows 83% of organizations have been hit by a firmware attack in the last two years.

As businesses continue to under-invest in resources to prevent firmware attacks, Weston warns about the inevitability of advanced attacks at the 'invisible' layer, the absence of skills and tools to find malicious activity in firmware, the nightmare of navigating the patching treadmill, and exciting tech innovation in the space.

Lena Smart, CISO, MongoDB

April 2nd, 2021  |  54 mins 21 secs

At age16, Lena Smart finished high school and went into the workforce. At the time, a university degree and advanced education was not available to her in a single-parent household in Scotland. Today, she is CISO of MongoDB, a $16 billion company with thousands of employees around the world and is leading the discussion on education and talent-identification in cybersecurity.

Lena joins Ryan on the show to tell stories from her childhood, the decisions that carved a path for a successful career in security, the anguish of imposter syndrome, the joys of building a modern security program, and impressive tech innovation moving the security needle.

Patrick Howell O'Neill, Cybersecurity Editor, MIT Technology Review

March 30th, 2021  |  25 mins 52 secs

apt, attribution, google, journalism, nation-state malware, project zero, story-telling

Patrick Howell O’Neill is the cybersecurity senior editor for MIT Technology Review. In this out-of-band episode of the show, Patrick joins Ryan to discuss his latest scoop on Google Project Zero's visibility into malware used in a Western .gov counter-terrorism operation, the tricky nature of attributing nation-state backed attacks, Apple's iOS becoming a hot target and the controversies surrounding all of these conversations. Follow Patrick on Twitter.

Nico Waisman, Head of Privacy & Security, Lyft

March 26th, 2021  |  56 mins 18 secs

ciso, offensive security, risk management, third-party risk, zero-days

After a 20-year career working in the offensive security reseach trenches, security industry pioneer Nico Waisman made the transition to defense to head up privacy and security efforts at ride-sharing firm Lyft. Waisman joins Ryan Naraine on the show to talk about early hacking in Argentina, the contributions of non-Americans to the security industry, and much much more...

Ron Brash on the water plant hacks and the state of ICS security

March 11th, 2021  |  50 mins 6 secs

critical infrastructure, ics, nation-state hacks, ransomware, scada

Ron Brash joins Ryan on the show talk about the recent water supply hack, the state of security in ICS/SCADA installations, the checklist of affordable things for critical infrastructure defender, and the things we should worry -- and not worry -- about. Ron is Director of Cyber Security Insights at Verve Industrial Protection, a critical infrastructure-focused organisation that sells services and products that work across IT and OT environments for effective cyber security, controls and management.

Throwback: Zero-day exploit broker Chaouki Bekrar

March 3rd, 2021  |  24 mins 42 secs

exploit brokers, exploits, pwn2own, vupen, zero-day, zerodium

This is the republication of an interview first conducted in March 2013 with then-VUPEN chief executive Chauki Bekrar. The audio file was lost in several podcast platform transfers and I'm glad to be able to retain this interview for historical purposes.

The recording was conducted in the hallways of the CanSecWest Pwn2Own hacking contest in 2013 where Bekrar's team of hackers demo'd a zero-day attack against Microsoft Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8, an exploit that bypassed all mitigations including the browser sandbox. We chat about the controversies surrounding the sale of zero-day vulnerabilities and exploits, his company’s business dealings and the work that goes into winning the CanSecWest Pwn2Own hacker contest.

Please excuse the audio quality and background noise.

Selena Larson, Intelligence Analyst, Dragos

September 16th, 2020  |  52 mins 17 secs

blue team, ics, journalism, ransomware, red team, scada

Journalist-turned-intel analyst Selena Larson joins the podcast to discuss the nuances of cybersecurity journalism, making the shift to analyzing intelligence and writing for a private audience, the ransomware epidemic, and the state of critical infrastructure security.

Fredrick Lee, Chief Security Officer, Gusto

September 10th, 2020  |  41 mins 37 secs

business continuity, compliance, corona virus, covid, crisis management, cybersecurity, pandemic, privacy, security

Gusto chief security officer Fredrick 'Flee' Lee talks about his passion for democratizing security, solving problems for small businesses, the responsibilities of being a black security leader, and the people and experiences that influenced him along the way.

Zack Whittaker, Security Editor, TechCrunch

September 1st, 2020  |  25 mins 45 secs

journalism, news gathering, story-telling, writing

TechCrunch security writer Zack Whittaker stumbled into journalism while in college and has carved a successful career covering cybersecurity the last decade. He joins the podcast to talk about landing at ZDNet out of university and some lucky breaks along the way. Zack also talks about the trials of living and working with Tourette syndrome.