Security Cocktail Hour

Modern cars are phones with wheels: GPS, telematics, connected apps, and data streams that can expose privacy risks, but also help recover a stolen vehicle before it disappears across jurisdictions.

Maria Santos and Eugene Giordani, co-founders of Autoscope, join the Security Cocktail Hour to explain how law enforcement can use consent-based access to connected-car data after a theft. We talk about relay attacks, key cloning, license plate reader limits, built-in GPS, jurisdiction problems, AirTags, immobilizers, Faraday bags, dash cams, and the practical steps car owners can take before something happens.

If you care about cybersecurity, connected vehicles, public safety, privacy, or just keeping your car in your driveway, this one is for you.

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In this episode, Ché Bolden joins us to talk about drone security, uncrewed systems, satellite security, GPS, autonomy, counter-drone defense, and the growing cyber risks around space-based infrastructure. We get into how drones were originally secured, why unencrypted links were such a problem, how command-and-control attacks can work, and why space is now part of the security conversation.

This conversation sits at the intersection of cyber security, drone warfare, satellite security, space security, and the future of connected systems. If you care about drones, satellites, GPS, cyber risk, or the security of critical infrastructure, this episode is worth a listen.

Guest

Ché Bolden

Learn more:

bolden.group

interastra.institute

Joe South joins the Security Cocktail Hour to discuss the state of communication satellite security and the doctoral research he is doing to change it. Joe is Director of Cloud & AI Security at Abira Security and hosts the Security Unfiltered podcast, one of the larger independent cybersecurity podcasts. The conversation covers what satellite defense actually looks like today: why most of the security is at the ground station rather than on the satellite itself, what happens when CubeSats stay in orbit for 10 to 12 years without meaningful patching, and how a zero trust framework could be made to work on hardware that operates on less than three watts of power. Joe walks through his proposed approach, which combines TPM-based component authentication with a distributed trust ring across satellite orbits.We also get into cyber warfare and the attribution problem, the strategic implications of a compromised satellite fleet, and Joe's personal story about building self-sufficiency. If you work in cloud, infrastructure, or national security and have never had space in your threat model, this is a good place to start. Guest: Joe South, Director of Cloud & AI Security at Abira Security, host of Security Unfiltered (securityunfiltered.com), doctoral candidate at Capital Technology University.Subscribe to the Security Cocktail Hour newsletter at securitycocktailhour.com for a biweekly read on cybersecurity news and upcoming episodes.

Matt Sloane has spent 13 years in the drone industry, working with over 1,000 public safety agencies to build and operate drone programs. As Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of SkyfireAI, he's at the intersection of drone operations, AI-enabled autonomy, and national security policy.

In this conversation, Matt covers how drone first response (DFR) programs are changing 911 operations, why the FAA's upcoming Part 108 framework will prioritize autonomy over human pilots, how counter-UAS mitigation actually works (with memorable stories from the Super Bowl and World Cup preparations), and what he told the White House about the Chinese drone ban's impact on American public safety agencies.

Supply chain risk from Chinese-made drones mirrors the Hikvision and Huawei debates. Counter-UAS involves signal jamming and RF detection. Autonomous drone systems are expanding the attack surface in ways most security programs haven't accounted for yet.

Amanda King was a Senior Director of Breakthrough Technology at an aerospace and defense company when she learned she was on a list of 77 people specifically targeted by Iran's Charming Kitten APT group. In this episode, she tells the full story: how the Associated Press tried to reach her three times, what the attackers accessed, how a US government agency got involved, and what she changed in her personal and professional life afterward.

The conversation covers the real-world experience of being targeted by a nation-state actor, the gap between corporate and personal security, what it's like when a three-letter agency asks for access to your life, and how the experience shaped Amanda's approach as she moved into executive roles. Amanda also shares her perspective on resilience, including her cancer journey, and a practical framework for processing difficult experiences.

Hosts: Joe Patti and Adam Roth. Recorded March 14, 2026.

Luke Canfield has been building, flying, and hacking drones for years. In this episode, he walks us through the real intersection of drones and cybersecurity — war-flying attacks on financial institutions, cartel drone operations at the US-Mexico border, DIY drone building with no attribution, and why "security exists in three dimensions."

Topics covered:

• War-flying: aerial man-in-the-middle attacks with drone-mounted Wi-Fi Pineapples
• 3 real cases of drone-based cyberattacks against financial institutions
• Mexican cartels: 330+ drone incursions/day at the US border
• Ukraine: how the conflict advanced drone tech by 15 years
• Drone detection: RF tracking, acoustic sensors, radar, AI
• FAA regulations and fines up to $100K
• Disaster response: mesh networks and radio repeaters via drones
• The coming Part 108 era and why a fake Amazon drone is the next attack vector

Guest: Luke Canfield — cybersecurity professional and drone security researcher
Learn more: https://www.lsechub.com

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Sharon Isaaci and David Warshavski spent careers on the offensive side of cybersecurity — breaking into organizations, finding zero-days, and cleaning up after the breaches that followed at Sygnia, Israel's premier incident response firm. After hundreds of engagements, they kept finding the same thing on both sides of the wire: breaches happen not because vulnerabilities go undetected, but because they go unmanaged.

Vulnerability management has been stuck for 30 years. More tools, more alerts, more dashboards — and vulnerability exploitation as a breach cause nearly tripled in 2024 alone. When ChatGPT arrived in late 2022, Sharon and David saw the missing piece: the organizational context that could fix the problem had always existed, scattered across Slack, email, wikis, and internal tools. GenAI finally made it possible to pull that together at scale.

In this conversation, we get into how two practitioners who've spent careers attacking organizations are now applying that attacker's lens — automated with AI — to break open a field that's resisted change for decades. We cover why visibility was never the real problem, what context-driven prioritization actually looks like, and what it takes to mobilize the people who do the patching.

This one is for practitioners who've lived the frustration. And for anyone watching AI get applied to a real, stubborn problem — not as a marketing claim, but as the thing that finally moves the needle.

Follow us for more conversations with practitioners who've been in the trenches.

00:00 Intro & Guest Introductions

05:35 Vulnerability Management: Still a Problem

09:45 AI as a Security Solution, Not a Problem

15:47 Visibility is Easy; Context is Hard

29:46 Leveraging the Hacker Mindset

35:29 We Need Less Findings, Not More

42:39 We're in Exciting Times

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What happens when your security perimeter extends to Mars—and MFA isn't an option?

In this episode of the Security Cocktail Hour, we sit down with Renee Wynn, former CIO of NASA, to explore what cybersecurity looks like when traditional frameworks simply don't apply.

Renee Wynn managed IT for some of humanity's most critical infrastructure: Mars rovers, the James Webb Space Telescope, the International Space Station. We cover the unique challenges of cybersecurity in the aerospace, defense and space fields—and what those constraints teach us about security thinking more broadly.

Early in the discussion, Renee emphasizes: "We always have to make sure we don't have a failure of imagination when we're looking at these risk-based decisions." This is the kind of mindset shift that shapes great security leaders. We also explore how she navigated government oversight, built trust with federal auditors, and led through constraints that forced her to rethink everything.

Whether you work in government, private sector, or dream of expanding your security career into new industries—this conversation will broaden how you think about what's possible.

00:00 Introduction & The Coolest Resume in Cybersecurity

00:51 No Multi-Factor Authentication on Mars: Securing Assets Beyond Earth

02:54 Navigating Oversight: How to Build Trust With Government Auditors

15:00 Failure of Imagination: Rethinking Risk Assessment in Extreme Environments

35:00 Leadership Lessons: Thinking Bigger in Security

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In part 2 of our discussion, John Strand tells us how the cybersecurity industry has turned stagnant, with a lack of innovation and an investment model that isn't going to turn that around any time soon. We explore why venture capital funding hasn't led to the breakthrough products the industry needs, and what's holding back real innovation. John also highlights the leaders in the security industry who are actively giving back to the community, and he and Adam try to one-up each other over who's stayed in the most disgusting hotel room.

00:00 Intro

00:12 Security is Ripe for Disruption

06:19 Better Investors = Better Security Products

10:22 Security is Awesome

12:43 Scaling Conference Talks

15:54 John's Advice on Guests

17:30 A Great Set of People

23:18 Bad Hotels, Good People

29:10 Wrapup

29:54 Outro

This is Part 2 of our conversation with John Strand.

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John Strand isn't interested in fixing the broken security education system—he's tearing it down and rebuilding it. In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, the founder of Black Hills Information Security explains why scholarships don't solve the real problem, how American universities are losing ground to European programs, and the unexpected places where he's finding the next generation of security talent.

What We Cover:

Why scholarships preserve a broken system instead of fixing it

The barriers that actually matters: Not what you expect

American universities vs. European programs: who's winning and why

Career changers bringing new perspectives to the industry.

AI's "fallow period" in hiring and what comes next

The standardization of mediocrity: how AI is making everything "blah"

00:00 Introduction

00:50 Rethinking Cyber Education

07:01 Diversity Brings Amazing People into Security

09:53 Changing Lives

11:42 Giving Back to the Community

14:33 The Strand Family of Companies

17:02 Security's AI Mistake

Part 2 coming soon

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