Security Weekly Podcast Network (Video)

This week, we've added an extra news segment just on AI. Not because we wanted to, but because the news cycle has bludgeoned us into it. My mom is asking about Chinese AI, my neighbor wants to know why his stocks tanked, my clients want to know how to prevent their employees from using DeepSeek, it's a mess.

First, a DeepSeek primer, so we can make sure all Enterprise Security Weekly listeners know what they need to know. Then we get into some other AI news stories.

I think the most interesting aspect of the DeepSeek announcements is the business/market impact, which isn't really security-related, but could have some impact on security teams. By introducing models that are cheaper to train, sell access to, and less demanding to run on systems, DeepSeek has opened up more market opportunities. That means we'll see generative AI used in markets and ways that didn't make sense before, because it was too expensive.

Another aspect that's really confusing is what DeepSeek is or does. For the most part, when someone says "DeepSeek", they could be referring to:

• the company
• the open source models released by the company
• the SaaS service (https://chat.deepseek.com)
• the mobile app (which is effectively just a front end for #3)
• the API (which is what the mobile app and SaaS service are built on top of)

From a security perspective, there's little to no operational risk around downloading and using the models, though they're likely to get banned, so companies could get in trouble for using them. As for the app, API, or SaaS service, assume everything you type into them is getting collected by China (so, significantly less safe, probably no US companies should do this).

But because these services are crazy cheap right now, I wouldn't be surprised if some suppliers and third parties will start using DeepSeek - if your third party service provider is using DeepSeek behind the scenes with your data, you still have problem #2, so best to ensure they're not doing this through updated contract language and call to confirm that they're not currently doing it (can take a while to get a new contract in place).

Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-392

Celebrating and Elevating Women in Cyber: Recently, International Women in Cyber Day (September 1) highlighted the ongoing challenges women face in the cybersecurity field, as well as the progress made in recent years. Women bring exceptional skills and knowledge to cybersecurity; however, it is estimated that they make up only 20% to 25% of the cybersecurity workforce—a percentage that has remained stagnant for years. Even more concerning, women often hit a glass ceiling just six to ten years into their cybersecurity careers. Lynn Dohm sheds light on these issues and emphasizes what the industry needs to focus on to continue celebrating and elevating women in cyber.

Segment Resources:

• 2023 State of Inclusion Benchmark in Cybersecurity
• 2024 Cyber Talent Study by N2K and WiCyS
• WiCyS Programs

Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-392

.ASS, Deepseek, AI Time Travel, Google, HeartBlocker, TikTok, Aaran Leyland, and More, on this edition of the Security Weekly News.

Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/swn-447

This week, we talked to our friends at Bitwarden about password vaults, storing more than just passwords, free software to manage those SSH keys, and vaults for developers. In the news, new/old Palo Alto vulnerabilities explained, taking down the power grid with a FlipperZero, more vulnerable bootloaders, putting garbage in your .ASS file, the US Government wants to look at routers, magic backdoors, weak password hashing, everyone is talking about Deepseek, hardware-level Anti-Virus, VMware ESXi and SSH, and if you pay the ransom you likely will not get your data back!

This segment is sponsored by Bitwarden. Visit https://securityweekly.com/bitwarden to learn more about them!

Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-859

In the leadership and communications segment, How CISOs can elevate cybersecurity in boardroom discussions, Nearly half of CISOs now report to CEOs, showing their rising influence, Steve Jobs Shared 1 Crystal Clear Way You'll Spot an Exceptional Leader, and more!

Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/bsw-380

The last five weeks have seen a flurry of news on Artificial Intelligence, especially this last week. It started on December 17, 2024 when the Bipartisan House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence (AI) released a report on "[g]uiding principles, forward-looking recommendations, and policy proposals to ensure America continues to lead the world in responsible AI innovation." Then a new administration, which:

1. revoked more than 50 prior executive orders, including Executive Order 14110 of October 30, 2023 (Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence).
2. announced a private-sector $500 billion investment in AI infrastructure
3. tasked federal agencies with drafting a new AI action plan within 180 days
4. signed an executive order on developing artificial intelligence 'free from ideological bias'

The Business Security Weekly crew tries to make sense of it all.

Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/bsw-380

DeepSeek, AIDs, Sex Crime, Microsoft, PayPal, GitHub, Joshua Marpet and More, on this edition of the Security Weekly News.

Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/swn-446

An open source security project forks in response to license changes (and an echo of how we've been here before), car hacking via spectacularly insecure web apps, hacking a synth via spectacularly cool MIDI messages, cookie parsing problems, the RANsacked paper of 100+ LTE/5G vulns found from fuzzing, and more!

Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-315

A lot of AI security boils down to the boring, but important, software security topics that appsec teams have been dealing with for decades. Niv Braun explains the distinctions between AI-related and AI-specific security as we avoid the FUD and hype of genAI to figure out where appsec teams can invest their time. He notes that data scientists have been working with ML and sensitive data sets for a long time, and it's good to have more scrutiny on what controls should be present to protect that data.

This segment is sponsored by Noma Security. Visit https://securityweekly.com/noma to learn more about them!

Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-315

In this week's enterprise security news,

1. the first cybersecurity IPO in 3.5 years!
2. new companies
3. new tools
4. the fate of CISA and the cyber safety review board
5. things we learned about AI in 2024
6. is the humanless SOC possible?
7. NGFWs have some surprising vulnerabilities
8. what did generative music sound like in 1996?

All that and more, on this episode of Enterprise Security Weekly.

Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-391