TikTok has been in the news for quite a while, but at Cyber Protection Magazine, we are pretty sure we aren't getting the whole story, so we are starting a series of articles and podcasts to get to the bottom of the issue, starting with this episode.

We talk to Ian Thornton-Trump -- raconteur, iconoclast, cyberwarrior, and CISO for Cyjax -- and he, as usual, has a lot to say. As you listen you will find that the real problem is not in the app, but in ourselves... and in bad algorithm design.

Also, this is an ad-free episode. If you want to support the work we are doing, go to Cyber Protection Magazine and donate to the cause. The button is on the bottom of the page.

You can't talk in polite company about politics or religion, but everyone can talk about how they hate advertising. And for good reason. I take a break from discussing technology to rant about what tech companies do to get you to buy their stuff, and why you don;t trust them.

“Sextortion” is a popular theme in media and the news, but it may or may not be a big deal. No one can really come up with a consensus about what it is and how widespread it is. It’s even difficult to pin down whether it is a crime. We talked with Ken Kuglin from Digital Forensics Corporation, a cybersecurity firm in Ohio, about how to deal with the attacks and their free services to educate people about how to avoid or deal with sextortion.

Cybersecurity has a healthier and older relationship with artificial intelligence (AI) than pretty much any other industry niche.  That’s because the information available on cyber threats is better vetted than 90 percent of what is fed into ChatGPT and the Google and Microsoft versions of generative AI.  But putting that data to use in security is not that easy… yet.

Cyber Protection Magazine has been tasing with companies for several weeks as we study the constructive uses of AI in security, and try to find a way through the hype. We interviewed the CEO of one company recently, Gopi Sirineni of Axiado.  They are about to launch a security co-processor driven by a unique AI that will be based on the Sirineni calls a “data lake” of attack schemes.  This information is a “living” database that will constantly be updated. But to make sure it is as comprehensive as possible, they are enlisting the help of the worldwide cybersecurity community.  To participate, you can contact Axiado through their website, on the corporate Linkedin page, or to Sirineni directly.  More will be available at the magazine in the next two weeks.

Vishing, short for "voice phishing," is on the rise again.  But then, it’s been rising almost exponentially for the past two years.  Last summer various organizations were reporting anywhere between 500-650 percent increases over the previous six quarters.  Now, as US citizens prepare their tax returns, the scam is getting another bump. We had a chat with Brian McDonald, director of product development and Mutare, about their technology and the problem of vishing.

Being a security company that gets hit with a data breach or malware attack is embarrassing, besides the fact that it scares the hell out of your customers. But the current tech fad of "decentralization" has a pretty good lesson for anyone thinking about establishing a security operations center, virtual or otherwise. We talked with the CEO of Dispel about how they've been decentralizing security operations in infrastructure clients for years now. 

If you're like us, #dataprivacyweek snuck up on you and almost got by before you knew it. But we were still busy. This podcast includes an interview with Brandon Rogers, a senior security engineer at Halo Security, an attack surface management company, who discusses the rash of data breaches at T-Mobile over the past couple of years and what they SHOULD be doing about it (Note, T-Mobile has not responded to requests for input), and then we have our first All Hands discussion with the team at Cyber Protection Magazine as we talk about the larger issues of data privacy.

It's Martin Luther King day today, which is an important holiday for me. This interview was incredibly satisfying because it demonstrates how far we've come since Dr. King Spoke in Washington DC in 1963. We have a long way to go, but this is a celebration of what is being accomplished.

To kick off the new year and our seventh season, Joe Basques and I tackle the conundrum of distrust in media and why marketing doesn't work the way it's supposed to in the technology world.

For the second year we are publishing predictions for 2023 in Cyber Protection Magazine by asking people and organizations to submit a brief, one-paragraph statement. Our friend and Cyjax CISO sent an entire presentation. And it was fun and scary all at the same time.,So we went with it. Check out the other predictions on the magazine and let us know what you think.