All links and images for this episode can be found on CISO Series (https://cisoseries.com/rated-1-in-irresponsible-security-journalism/)

No security alert is too small for us to completely misrepresent its severity. The sky is falling on the latest episode of CISO/Security Vendor Relationship Podcast.

Thanks to this week's podcast sponsor, Zix.

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On this week's episode

Why is everybody talking about this now?

Two recent stories showed some fallibility in multi-factor authentication or MFA. We repeatedly recommended MFA on this show. But, the FBI announced some technical and social engineering techniques that are being used to break multi-factor authentication. In addition, Twitter admitted that email addresses and phone numbers used to set up MFA might have been sent to third party advertisers. The FBI says its news shouldn't change our trust in MFA. William Gregorian, CISO, Addepar, posted on LinkedIn that the press is claiming that MFA is broken and that's irresponsible journalism.

Let's dig a little deeper

Security professionals thrive on hearing about and learning about the latest threats. It feeds the latest security headlines and conferences. While it's often fascinating and keeps everyone interested, to what level are security concerns based on well-known years old threats vs. the latest threats?

"What's Worse?!"

Whose mistakes are worse? Yours or the vendors'?

Please, enough. No, more.

We've talked a lot about machine learning on this show and the definition of it is broad. What's ML's value in threat protection. We discuss what we've heard enough about with regard to machine learning being used for threat protection And what would we like to hear a lot more.

When companies in retail or enterprise remind their online visitors to change their passwords, are they doing them a favor or causing them grief? Password managers exist, of course, as do newer forms of passwordless authentication, multifactor authentication and behavioral and biometric data.

But ultimately, whose responsibility is this? Should a merchant website place the onus of personal security back on the customer? And if so, how would this protect the merchant’s own property? If this jeopardizes a sale or transaction, the cost of proactive security, at least for the short term appears too great. And it’s obvious, from the avalanche of data breaches of recent years that stored data of any sort becomes a permanent liability.

More available on CISO Series.

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Ask a CISO

Gina Yacone, a consultant with Agio, asks, "If you’re performing a table top exercise. Who are the only three people you would want to have a seat at that table?"