Security Stories

All rise, all rise, for the inaugural episode of Infosec Court, brought to you live from RSA Conference. 

Judge Wendy Nather presides, and three infosec experts (Helen Patton, Dave Lewis and Dennis Fisher) all have a ‘hot take’ that they want to be more widely accepted in the infosec industry.

Their task as plaintiffs is to try to persuade Judge Wendy and a jury of their peers that their hot take deserves to become infosec canon. 

Come for the chance to hear Wendy in her element. Stay for the outrageous objections ("What even is Non Zero Trust?) and the unexpected turn of events when Wendy introduces an Amicus Curiae, handed to her shortly before proceedings began...

For our 50th episode, we invited our friends from Cisco Talos to join us for an authentic, truthful conversation about mental health and burnout.

Amy Henderson, Ashlee Benge, Matt Olney, and Mitch Neff, joined Hazel and Taz to share  some experiences. We start by talking about the work that Talos has been doing in Ukraine and the mental health effects of that work. That also includes that weird, disconnected feeling that can develop when we're doing as much as we can to help, but we also go home to a warm and comfortable bed, i.e not in a war zone.

This takes us to conversations about other global events, and how hard it can be to prioritize self care when everything feels...a lot....

We also share our own practices and techniques that have helped us manage our mental health, and how we can give ourselves permission to be kind to ourselves.

Further resources:

Creating safe spaces in cybersecurity ebook

Ryan K. Louie’s presentation at RSA: The mental health impact of cyberattacks

Black Hat community: A place to engage with Black Hat attendees on topics specific to the InfoSec community, including health and well-being.

Cisco Gateway: A global online community where Cisco customers share their professional and personal challenges and stories.

CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably):Leading a movement against suicide.

Today's episode features a chat between Hazel and three security leaders - Accidental CISO (yes, the anonymity intrigues us too!), Liz Waddell, Incident Response Practice Lead for Cisco Talos, and Christos Syngelakis, CISO and Data Privacy Officer at Motor Oil Group.

They talk about their experiences of building security resilience – so we got into the key elements of an Incident Response plan, how to achieve company wide buy in, the best ways to go about training your people and trying to avoid burnout, how to use threat intelligence and all the things that go into running a SOC, what to do in the case of a Zero Day attack, how to build a security design program...and so much more.

For more stories on how to build security resilience, check out our new ebook here.

This episode was originally recorded as a live Cisco Chat event. You can watch the original video here

Today we're going full steam into the metaverse and Web 3.0.  Joining us to discuss his research on this topic is Jaeson Schultz, Technical Leader for Cisco Talos Security Intelligence & Research Group.

Taz and Hazel have a great conversation with Jason about the evolution of the metaverse, as well as the security implications, such as rising numbers of scams going after people’s cryptowallets, and the ethical concerns that are potentially popping up.

For more on this topic, have a read of Jason's in depth research on the metaverse and Web 3.0  here.

Jason has over 20 years specialising in thwarting abuse of security protocols like SMTP, HTTP/S, and DNS. He's a former manager of the SpamCop DNSBL which has been taking the fight to the spammers for over a decade.

He's also assisted in design and development of the Cisco IronPort Anti-Spam content scanner and he’s also developed some of the architecture & content detection for Cisco’s Web Security Appliance, Cloud Web Security, and Next Generation Firewall products. 

Most recently as Technical Leader for Talos, he conducts security research, speaks at conferences, and authors blogs and whitepaper publications.

Today's guest is Shannon Lietz, VP of Vulnerability Labs at Adobe. Shannon joined Hazel to talk about how she first got into offensive security and the lessons she’s learned along the way, as well as the kind of work she and her team undertake at Adobe to test defenses.

We also talk about measurement, and how security was never set up to be measured properly, which is something Shannon is trying to change. She also has some thoughts on risk management and tackling that in a different way.

And at one of the most poignant parts of the interview, Shannon talks about the moment she decided to change her leadership style.

If you're interested in the book Shannon mentioned, "Humanocracy" here's a link to the website www.humanocracy.com

Finally, if you're free at 10am PT on April 26th, be sure to join Hazel plus special guests Accidental CISO, Liz Waddell and Christos Syngelakis, to discuss stories of how to build security resilience. Sign up to be reminded here - CiscoChat Live: Detect, Respond, Recover

Today we welcome two guests to the Security Stories pod. Firstly Martin Lee from Talos drops by to give us an update on wiper malware, and how it’s been playing a part in cyber attacks on Ukrainian organizations and infrastructure.

We talk about the history of wiper malware, where it’s cropped up before, it’s role in the kill chain and possible threat actor motivations, as well as what organizations can be doing to prevent this type of attack.

Secondly, we welcome Jerry Gamblin, Director of Security Research at Kenna Security to join us for an in depth chat about his career.  Jerry’s story is a really interesting one, from starting out on the IT helpdesk, to working on security networks at the Misouri House of Representatives, and onto his role at Kenna where he has built several tools to help people understand the different types of vulnerabilities and how to mitigate them.

We discuss Jerry’s approach – how he inspires his team to think differently, and how personally he’s driven a sense of thinking outside of the job description. We also discuss how organizations can deal with the ever growing list of new vulnerabilities, and how you can prirotise them.

Head here for Kenna's Prioritization to Prediction report

Head here for Jerry's vulnerability analysis and graphing CVE.ICU

A short bonus episode for your feeds today, as Hazel got the opportunity to sit down with Cisco Talos' Head of Outreach, Nick Biasini, and chat all things hybrid work.

Nick recently published the research, "Time to secure hybrid work for 2022, not 2002" and in this episode, we explore some of the malicious activities from state-sponsored actors and criminal organizations, which have made being a defender an increasingly difficult task in recent months.

Join Hazel for a threat alert event for guidance on current cyberattacks and insight into internet activity in Ukraine. This event was originally broadcast live, featuring members of the Cisco Talos threat intelligence team, and Cisco ThousandEyes.

Both teams are actively monitoring the digital landscape and openly sharing essential findings to contribute to the safety of our customers globally.

Speakers:
JJ Cummings, Principal, Threat Intelligence & Interdiction, Cisco Talos
Amy Henderson - Leader, Strategic Planning and Communications, Cisco Talos
Angelique Medina, Head of Internet Intelligence, Cisco ThousandEyes

For the latest information on Talos' research into the current situation in Ukraine, check here for continual updates: cs.co/TalosUA

In today's Security Stories episode we meet Goher Mohammad, Head of Infosec at L & Q Group, one of the UK’s largest charitable housing associations which houses over a quarter of a million people.

Goher’s is a story of resilience, geeking out over technology, and the challenges and rewards of building a brand new security team from scratch. We also talk about the power of community and how Goher is bringing together fellow non-profit security professionals.

Before that, Taz and Ben are back to join Hazel in the pod booth for a really interesting discussion on data privacy - more specifically online tracking, and some recent developments made there. You can also check out Cisco's new Data Privacy Report: Privacy becomes mission critical.

Please note that this episode was recorded before the events in Ukraine.  For analysis on what  Cisco Talos is observing, which includes a variety of cyber attacks targeting Ukraine, including disinformation, defacements, DDoS, and wiper malware please check out the Talos threat advisory blog.

Cisco stands guard with our customers in Ukraine. You can read here about Talos’ efforts to-date in information gathering, threat hunting and the assigning of dedicated Cisco engineers to Ukrainian organizations seeking to secure their operations, and how we have taken the extraordinary step of directly operating security products 24/7 for critical customers in Ukraine while over 500 employees at Cisco have joined them to assist in collecting open-source intelligence.

Since there’s been a lot of discussion and debate about Extended Detection and Response (XDR) at the moment, we thought we would bring on two experts to talk about it.

Enric Cuixeres is a Cisco Secure customer who has implemented an XDR strategy within his organization Leng D'Or. Our other expert is former US army CID special agent and computer forensic examiner Jessica Bair. Jessica is the Director of Technical Alliances at Cisco, who has been helping many of our customers with their XDR strategies.

We discuss the practical implications of implementing XDR, as told by people who have been there and done it – and also what benefits will it really bring, including how it can help overburdened security staff.

For more on this topic, take a look at our ebook "Extended Detection and Response for Dummies."

Learn more about the Cisco Gateway community as mentioned in the episode.

Before that, Lindsey O’Donnell Welch, executive editor of Decipher, is back with us for the second week in a row. Lindsey discusses the just-announced Cyber Safety Review Board and its role in assessing “significant cybersecurity events”. For more information about this check out Decipher's report.

And finally, you can view the on-demand broadcast "Defending Against Critical Threats" in which six experts from across Cisco Secure came together to analyze what's been happening in the realms of ransomware, supply chain attacks, vulnerabilities, log4J, Emotet and the rise in Mac OS malware.