The Cybersecurity Podcast

On this extra episode of The Cybersecurity Podcast, reporter Jack Detsch brings you the highlights from Beat the Breach, an event cohosted by Passcode and Invincea during the RSA Conference in San Francisco. The live discussion focused on how the Trump administration will confront the nation’s biggest cybersecurity challenges. You'll hear from former White House Homeland Security Adviser Lisa Monaco, former US Chief Information Security Officer Greg Touhill, General Motors’ Jeffrey Massimilla, and US Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Hickey. This bonus episode is sponsored by Forcepoint, NSS Labs, and Vectra Networks.

Last summer, more than 1,500 hackers targeted Pentagon websites – but it wasn't a massive cyberattack. These were vetted hackers invited to participate in the US government’s first ever bug bounty program. Chris Lynch, the director of the Defense Digital Service, and Lisa Wiswell, the group’s digital security lead, explain in this episode of The Cybersecurity Podcast why letting researchers find security flaws in exchange for money or prizes is a big part of the Pentagon’s push to solve complex IT problems. This episode is sponsored by HackerOne. 

The election may be over but Washington isn’t moving on from the election hacking story just yet. With the intelligence community blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin for organizing hacks on Democratic political organizations to influence the American election to help Donald Trump, Capitol Hill is abuzz with talks of more hearings and new legislation. Cochairman of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, Congressman Jim Langevin joins this episode to talk about the challenges ahead. Also on this episode, cohost Peter Singer of New America discusses the president-elect's reticence to condemn Russia for the cyberattacks and cohost Sara Sorcher of the Christian Science Monitor's Passcode discusses Germany's plan to fight fake news. 

The breach at the Office of Personnel Management was one of the most significant cyberattacks in history, and now serves as a cautionary tale for many in Washington and beyond. But what do we know about it a year later? How did it happen? What are some of the lessons the federal government needs to learn to prevent such major breach from happening again? To answer that question and more, The Cybersecurity Podcast crew interviews one of the authors of the US House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, John Costello, who spent last year on Capitol Hill as a Science and Technology fellow through TechCongress. 

With a diverse array of threats facing companies and governments around the world, what ideas will resonate with investors? On this episode of The Cybersecurity Podcast, we interviewed Sunil James, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist investing in information security for Bessemer Venture Partners. Also on this episode, podcast cohost Sara Sorcher from Passcode discusses her latest feature on 15 kids under 15 years old who are rising stars in cybersecurity and cohost Peter W. Singer from New America discusses his latest piece on the Atlantic, about how social media is changing modern warfare.

Show notes:
15 under 15: Rising stars in cybersecurity, Passcode
War goes viral: How social media is changing modern warfare, The Atlantic

Asia is increasingly the global center of gravity in everything from politics and economics – and, increasingly, in cybersecurity. The region has seen the build up of offensive digital capacity in nearly every state, and at the business level, companies based there are roughly 80 percent more likely to be breached than the global average. On this episode of the Cybersecurity Podcast, Toby Feakin, Director of the International Cyber Policy Centre at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, discusses his program's new assessment of the state of cybersecurity in Asia, how it compares to the US, and what comes next. Also speaking to recent hacks targeting the US political system, Feakin was emphatic about steps the US should take towards restoring cyber deterrence and what would happen to global norms if it doesn't. Link to report: https://www.aspi.org.au/publications/cyber-maturity-2016

On this extra episode of The Cybersecurity Podcast, Passcode reporter Jack Detsch examines ideas for securing the Internet of Things in light of the recent cyberattack that took advantage of hacked web-connected gadgets. We hear from experts who spoke at the recent Security of Things Forum in Boston including Robert Silvers, assistant secretary of Homeland Security; Julian Goldman of Partners Healthcare; independent hacker Travis Goodspeed; Kevin Fu of Virta Labs; and Rajesh Krishnan, chief marketing officer at HackerOne.