I get a new report from a different research company almost every week about the state of cybersecurity. Most of them say the same thing, but I do read them all the way through. Recently received a report from a company called HelpSystems, a cybersecurity services company that works with some pretty big name companies and they issued a report that got me yawning almost immediately. But their research subsidiaries, Agari and PhishLabs, buried a couple of items that perked up my ears so I said yes to an interview. What follows is a 30-minute discussion about the report focusing on a couple of areas, hybrid vishing, and vulnerabilities criminals are using to target Office 365 users. John Wilson, senior fellow for threat research went on to talk about which email platforms are most popular for criminals and how criminal activity using cryptocurrency is on the rise. You can get a copy of the report here.big-name

Period and ovulation trackers have been around for quite a while but they are not, for the most part, privacy forward. In fact, according to the Mozilla foundation, only a few even have privacy policies. That is problematic for women in states that are criminalizing abortion where they are subpoenaing records of women even searching for options. Virtru, a security software company decided to fix that problem at and Def Con 2022 the demonstrated a concept app that put complete control of access to the data in the hands of the user. In preparation for Women's Equality Day on August 26, we talked with the team leader that developed the app, Cassandra Bailey, and the senior vice president of product strategy, Rob McDonald about the process. Unfortunately, they have no plans to make the app available to the public but have put the building blocks on Git Hub for app developers to run with. You can see a demonstration of it here. Maybe somebody out there will make a secure app.

Quantum computing has been in the news for some time but most people don't know why they should care. They should. Jack Hidary, CEO of SandboxAQ explains why.

Even the promising announcements from Apple and Google about the end of passwords is going to take a long time to spread through the user base. But the technology exists to make them disappear if only we weren’t so stubborn about using them. We talked to Boian Simic, CEO of HYPR, a company making true passwordless tech… that is yet available to anyone but the wealthiest among us.

The wildly popular massive-multiplayer online games don't make the news much for big security breaches, but it appears they are vulnerable to lateral attacks that can steal data and abuse children. The companies that run these platforms tend to blame the users for breaching security. We spent some time with Raj Dodhiawala, CEO of Remediant, a cybersecurity SaaS company that defends networks against lateral attacks. He was pretty hard on companies that expect users to protect the network. Look for a larger article on game platform breaches in Cyber Protection Magazine

One of my favorite security gurus, Ian Thornton-Trump sent me a text recently about the top-five security failures in recent history that we have yet to learn from. So I decided to call him and ask what he meant. It's worth listening to.

The Metaverse can be used for immersive education that can engage students and enhance the experiential aspects of education. It certainly makes for more interesting field trips. But the potential for disaster looms.  Luckily there are some, while recognizing the upsides of the technology, who take a very realistic view of the potential downsides. One of them is Jaime Donnelly.

Donnelly is an author, and speaker on immersive technology for education. She’s also the engagement director for Identity Automation, a company dedicated to identity and access management tools for K-12 and universities. She is also a great promoter for the future of immersive technology for education.

We sat down to chat about her extensive collection of VR goggles and her realistic expectations. She makes an old curmudgeon feel a bit better about the future.

The week after #RSAC2022 seems to be a good time to start a new season of Crucial Tech, so here we go.

I'm going to the RSA Conference in San Francisco this week, so I didn't do a full episode yet. This is a preview of what's to come so stay tuned.