CISO Stories Podcast (Audio)

The threat landscape is too massive to treat every vulnerability, control gap, and exposure as equally urgent. In this episode, Heather joins us to explore how exposure management is changing the way organizations prioritize and report cyber risk.

Instead of starting with control effectiveness, teams can begin with key risk indicators: What is actually exposed? What threats are real, tangible, and imminent? What could have the greatest business impact?

From there, organizations can tie those risks back to the controls designed to reduce them. It's a shift from asking "Are our controls working?" to "Are we reducing the risks that matter most?"

Segment Resources: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-green-dashboards-real-exposure-security-kri-framework-ceylan-ho2yc/

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This is our final episode of the CISO Stories podcast. Thank you to host Jessica Hoffman, to creator & host Todd Fitzgerald, and most of all, to our audience for tuning in.

Show Notes: https://cisostoriespodcast.com/csp-229

Vulnerability management isn't just about finding more vulnerabilities—it's about knowing what matters and having the resources to act. Chuck Loring of the Lee County Clerk of Circuit Court & Comptroller joins CISO Stories to explore how budgets, staffing, legacy technology, and mission priorities shape vulnerability management across the public and private sectors. We challenge the idea that AI alone will solve the problem and discuss where it can actually make a difference. Chuck shares his perspective on risk-based prioritization as vulnerability volumes continue to surge. The conversation also examines what public and private organizations can learn from each other. Ultimately, effective vulnerability management isn't about patching everything—it's about identifying and addressing what poses the greatest risk.

Segment Resources:

https://cybersecconsultingleaders.com/blog

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Show Notes: https://cisostoriespodcast.com/csp-228

In this episode of CISO Stories, Jessica Hoffman sits down with Matt Lee to explore attack surface management, AWS security, and the cloud misconfigurations that can put organizations at risk.

Matt shares lessons from his experience auditing cloud environments, including common AWS security gaps around identity and access management, exposed resources, security groups, and overly permissive access. The conversation also covers emerging challenges around AI agents, protecting production data, and balancing speed of innovation with security controls.

From preventing cloud breaches to building stronger security practices, Matt breaks down what organizations should understand about reducing risk in today's evolving threat landscape.

Segment Resources:

https://schematical.com/techdebt https://www.oreilly.com/videos/zero-to-hero/0642572107789/ https://schematical.com/posts https://schematical.com/free https://schematical.com/speaking

This segment is sponsored by Horizon3. Visit https://cisostoriespodcast.com/horizon3 to learn more about them!

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Show Notes: https://cisostoriespodcast.com/csp-227

AI is changing cloud security fast, but the biggest challenge is not just adoption. It is governance. In this episode, Jess sits down with Brent Neil, CISO at RapidScale, to talk about what CISOs should be watching as AI becomes embedded in cloud environments, business workflows, and sensitive data systems. Brent shares practical insight on AI governance, identity and access, cloud security controls, and the risks that emerge when experimentation moves into production. The conversation explores how security leaders can support innovation without losing visibility, accountability, or trust. Brent also breaks down the questions CISOs should be asking before AI tools scale deeper into the enterprise. Because AI may be unavoidable, but unmanaged AI risk is optional.

Segment Resources:

RapidScale's IT Talent Gap Report: https://try.rapidscale.net/the-talent-gap/

This segment is sponsored by Arctic Wolf. Visit https://cisostoriespodcast.com/arcticwolf to learn more about them!

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Show Notes: https://cisostoriespodcast.com/csp-226

In this episode, former FBI cyber leader Jason Manar joins us to unpack the state of critical infrastructure security and why small and medium-sized businesses are more connected to it than they realize. From power, telecom, healthcare, finance, and supply chains, Jason explains how hidden dependencies can turn "not our problem" into a business-stopping event. With his FBI perspective and CISO experience, Jason shares what organizations should understand about risk, resilience, and protecting the systems we all quietly rely on.

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Show Notes: https://cisostoriespodcast.com/csp-225

Identity is at the center of nearly every modern breach, but when IAM responsibilities are shared with MSSPs, where does trust end and accountability begin? In this episode of CISO Stories, Jessica Hoffman sits down with Dr. Dustin Sachs to explore the human side of identity and access management, including cognitive bias, automation, privilege creep, and the hidden risks of "blind trust" in real-world security operations.

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Show Notes: https://cisostoriespodcast.com/csp-224

In this episode of CISO Stories, Jessica Hoffman speaks with Richard Marcus, CISO at Optro, about how organizations are securing cloud environments at scale. They discuss secure by design principles, infrastructure as code, continuous monitoring, and how GRC and security teams are working together more effectively. The conversation also explores the impact of AI on both defense and the evolving threat landscape, with practical insights for modern security leaders.

Segment Resources:

Optro Cyber Risk Playbook: https://optro.ai/resources/ebook/the-cyber-risk-playbook-for-the-ai-threat-era

This segment is sponsored by BlinkOps. Blink Micro-Agents stop AI threats with agentic speed and precision — visit https://cisostoriespodcast.com/blinkops to see the Agentic SOC in action.

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Show Notes: https://cisostoriespodcast.com/csp-223

Threat intelligence too often arrives as a steady stream of alerts that don't translate into clear, timely decisions. This episode explores how public-sector intel flows today through channels like CISA, MS-ISAC, and CIS—and why changes in funding and distribution can reshape what organizations actually receive and when. We also imagine an all-in state approach, where states take a bigger role in getting actionable cyber intel to local businesses and organizations. From a higher-ed security leadership lens, we connect student data privacy and regulatory realities to the broader public–private challenge—and highlight community-driven efforts like the Redwood Project that strengthen trust-based, peer-to-peer intelligence sharing.

This segment is sponsored by Arctic Wolf. Visit https://cisostoriespodcast.com/arcticwolf to learn more about them!

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Show Notes: https://cisostoriespodcast.com/csp-222

CISO Jadee Hanson shares how Vanta "drinks its own champagne," running on NIST CSF with quarterly baseline reviews and using Vanta's GRC platform to turn every release into live UAT for privacy, governance, and compliance. We rethink third-party management—why point-in-time risk scores are fading and how AI drives continuous monitoring and outcome-based assurance. Bottom line: don't just audit—instrument your controls and prove trust in real time.

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Show Notes: https://cisostoriespodcast.com/csp-221

Title: Keys Without People" — John Heasman on Cleaning Up Non-Human Access

Summary: John breaks today's non-human identity mess into three buckets: core tools your business runs on, old/one-off integrations that linger, and engineer tokens left behind. His playbook is simple: decide what's truly critical, assign a clear owner, keep access minimal, and review it on a schedule. With AI spawning even more "non-human users," basics done well—prioritize, tighten, rotate, repeat—win the day.

This segment is sponsored by Saviynt. Visit https://cisostoriespodcast.com/saviynt to learn more about them!

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Show Notes: https://cisostoriespodcast.com/csp-220