Welcome to part two of Davida Dinerman’s fascinating conversation with Deb Radcliff. Deb is the first person to recognize cybersecurity as a reporting beat. She was immersed in the hacking community in the mid-1990s, when few people were familiar with hacking. Deb has won several awards for her investigative reporting, most notably two Jesse H. Neal Awards, one for best individual feature, for “Hackers, Terrorists and Spies” in Software Magazine, and the other for group reporting, best news story, Computerworld, “Wireless LANs: Trouble in the Air.”

Deb’s business, DeRad CyberSecurity Publishing Services, built a white paper and webcast program for SANS institute. She has also written for the SANS Security Insights blog, including Top Three COVID-Related Risks from earlier this year. 

Radcliff has recently created a new cyber thriller screenplay, Breaking Backbones, as part of a hacker trilogy TV or streaming series.

In this portion of the conversation, Deb Radcliff shares her insights on the role of the CISO and gives us a preview of her cyber thrillers.

00:49 - The term “hacker” has been mangled through the years

04:37 - CISOs are in a tough place

07:12 - CISOs must be able to speak the language of the business - not just security

11:21 - Deb’s latest cyber thriller, “Breaking Backbones”

13:56 - Story characters are based on real-life personalities

18:37 - Getting started as a book author

19:32 - Privacy issues related to chips embedded in humans