The Defender's Advantage Podcast

Mandiant Consultants Trisha Alexander, Muhammed Muneer, and Pat McCoy join host Luke McNamara to discuss Mandiant's recently launched services for securing AI. They discuss how organizations can proactively approach securing the implementation of AI workloads, red-team and test these security controls protecting generative AI models in production, and then also employ AI within the security organization itself. 

For more, please see: https://cloud.google.com/security/solutions/mandiant-ai-consulting

Mandiant consultants Will Silverstone (Senior Consultant) and Omar ElAhdan (Principal Consultant) discuss their research into cloud compromise trends over 2023.  They discuss living off the land techniques in the cloud, the concept of the extended cloud attack surface, how organizations can better secure their identities, third party cloud compromise trends, and more.  

Will and Omar's talk at Google Next: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg13kGsN9ok&t=2s

Michael Raggi (Principal Analyst, Mandiant Intelligence) joins host Luke McNamara to discuss Mandiant's research into China-nexus threat actors using proxy networks known as “ORBs” (operational relay box networks). Michael discusses the anatomy and framework Mandiant developed to map out these proxy networks, how ORB networks like SPACEHOP are leveraged by China-nexus APTs, and what this all means for defenders. 

For more,  check out: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/china-nexus-espionage-orb-networks

Follow Michael on X at @aRtAGGI 

Mandiant Principal Analysts John Wolfram and Tyler McLellan join host Luke McNamara to discuss their research in the "Cutting Edge" blog series, a series of investigations into zero-day exploitation of Ivanti appliances.  John and Tyler discuss the process of analyzing the initial exploitation, and the attribution challenges that emerged following the disclosure and widespread exploitation by a range of threat actors.  They also discuss the role a suspected Volt Typhoon cluster played into the follow-on exploitation, and share their thoughts on what else we might see from China-nexus zero-day exploitation of edge infrastructure this year.  

For more on this research, please check out: 

Cutting Edge, Part 1: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/suspected-apt-targets-ivanti-zero-day
Cutting Edge, Part 2: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/investigating-ivanti-zero-day-exploitation
Cutting Edge, Part 3: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/investigating-ivanti-exploitation-persistence
Cutting Edge, Part 4: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/ivanti-post-exploitation-lateral-movement

Follow John on X at  @Big_Bad_W0lf_
Follow Tyler on X at @tylabs

Jurgen Kutscher, Mandiant Vice President for Consulting, joins host Luke McNamara to discuss the findings of the M-Trends 2024 report.  Jurgen shares his perspective on the "By the Numbers" data, the theme of evasion of detection in this year's report, and how Mandiant consultants have been leveraging AI in purple and red teaming operations. 

For more on the M-Trends 2024 report: http://cloud.google.com/security/m-trends

Kimberly Goody, Head of Mandiant's Cyber Crime Analysis team and Jeremy Kennelly, Lead Analyst of the same team join host Luke McNamara to breakdown the current state of ransomware and data theft extortion. Kimberly and Jeremy describe how 2023 differed from the activity they witnessed the year prior, and how changes in the makeup of various groups have played out in the threat landscape, why certain sectors see more targeting, and more.

Host Luke McNamara is joined by Mandiant consultants Shanmukhanand Naikwade and Dan Nutting to discuss hunting for threat actors utilizing "living off the land" (LotL) techniques. They discuss how LotL techniques differ from traditional malware based attacks, ways to differentiate between normal and malicious use of utilities, Volt Typhoon, and more. 

Morgan Adamski, Director of the NSA's Cybersecurity Collaboration Center (CCC) joins host Luke McNamara to discuss the threat posed by Volt Typhoon and other threat actors utilizing living off the land (LotL) techniques, zero-day exploitation trends, how the CCC works with private sector organizations,  and more. 

Principal Analyst Michael Barnhart joins host Luke McNamara to discuss Mandiant's research into the threat posed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) usage of IT workers to gain access to enterprises. 

For more on Mandiant's analysis of North Korea's cyber capabilities, please see: https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/north-korea-cyber-structure-alignment-2023

Taylor Lehmann (Director, Google Cloud Office of the CISO) and Bill Reid (Security Architect, Google Cloud Office of the CISO) join host Luke McNamara to discuss their takeaways from the last year of threat activity witnessed by enterprises within healthcare and life sciences. They discuss applying threat intelligence to third-party risk management, threat modeling, and more. 

For more on the work of Google Cloud's Office of the CISO: https://cloud.google.com/solutions/security/board-of-directors?hl=en#additional-thought-leadership-resources