Crucial Tech

You've read the headlines about the stock market and the tech sector in particular. Self-proclaimed genius tech bros are hemorrhaging wealth, portfolios are crashing. But while the cybersecurity industry isn't completely unaffected, it is still attracting billions in new investment and private equity acquisitions. We talk to Brad LaPorte of Lionfish Advisors about why investments are falling in tech and why cyber is the new darling. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

I'm working on a story about some interesting numbers regarding the state of cyber crime. The number seem to indicate that, overall, we might be making progress on reducing it, though not eliminating it. But to be sure I've spent the past two weeks talking to experts about the numbers who are totally pessimistic and doubtful. One of them is Gerry Kennedy, CEO of Observatory Strategic Management, an organization that advises industry and governments about insurance issues. In our discussion he recommended other sources, which will be included in the article on Cyber Protection Magazine. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

Want some good news about technology? Stay tuned --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

I was pleasantly introduced to a non-profit cybersecurity company this week. Quad9 was established 6 years ago with the goal of reducing human error as the source of breaches, which makes of more than 90 percent of all successful cyberattacks. And they do it for free. Their website (www.quad9.com) has a lot of easy to understand and use tools to block malicious actors from accessing your systems and data. Check it out. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

The most innocuous things can be open invitations to criminbals to hack your data, or infiltrate your company. Adam Levine, cybersecurity podcaster and founder of Credit.com talked with Crucial Tech about "office phishing" and the "three M's" of personal cyber protection. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

Quantum computing is often in the news, mostly about how it's going to destroy the world as nation states bust the hardest encryptions around so they can steal national and corporate secrets. However, there are no quantum computers available today that can actually accomplish the task and, thankfully, there are whole industries popping up to deal with the worst aspects of the tech while encouraging some good things. We talked with Eric Garcell of Classiq, one of the companies dedicated to protecting quantum computing intellectual property, about why quantum computers are a good thing and that, in some cases, are doing good things now. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

I get a new report from a different research company almost every week about the state of cybersecurity. Most of them say the same thing, but I do read them all the way through. Recently received a report from a company called HelpSystems, a cybersecurity services company that works with some pretty big name companies and they issued a report that got me yawning almost immediately. But their research subsidiaries, Agari and PhishLabs, buried a couple of items that perked up my ears so I said yes to an interview. What follows is a 30-minute discussion about the report focusing on a couple of areas, hybrid vishing, and vulnerabilities criminals are using to target Office 365 users. John Wilson, senior fellow for threat research went on to talk about which email platforms are most popular for criminals and how criminal activity using cryptocurrency is on the rise. You can get a copy of the report here.big-name --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anc

Period and ovulation trackers have been around for quite a while but they are not, for the most part, privacy forward. In fact, according to the Mozilla foundation, only a few even have privacy policies. That is problematic for women in states that are criminalizing abortion where they are subpoenaing records of women even searching for options. Virtru, a security software company decided to fix that problem at and Def Con 2022 the demonstrated a concept app that put complete control of access to the data in the hands of the user. In preparation for Women's Equality Day on August 26, we talked with the team leader that developed the app, Cassandra Bailey, and the senior vice president of product strategy, Rob McDonald about the process. Unfortunately, they have no plans to make the app available to the public but have put the building blocks on Git Hub for app developers to run with. You can see a demonstration of it here. Maybe somebody out there will make a secure app. --- Send in a voice message: https:

As a journalist, I am morally bound to be objective. That's why, because I'm not a big fan of cryptocurrency, I have made an effort to give enthusiasts of the technology every chance to defend their positions. But I got a chance to interview Bruce Schneier about the subject and had to take it. I tried very hard to be supportive of the innovative uses of blockchain and its primary application in this interview. It didn't go well. But, boy, was it entertaining. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

Quantum computing has been in the news for some time but most people don't know why they should care. They should. Jack Hidary, CEO of SandboxAQ explains why. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

Even the promising announcements from Apple and Google about the end of passwords is going to take a long time to spread through the user base. But the technology exists to make them disappear if only we weren’t so stubborn about using them. We talked to Boian Simic, CEO of HYPR, a company making true passwordless tech… that is yet available to anyone but the wealthiest among us. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

The wildly popular massive-multiplayer online games don't make the news much for big security breaches, but it appears they are vulnerable to lateral attacks that can steal data and abuse children. The companies that run these platforms tend to blame the users for breaching security. We spent some time with Raj Dodhiawala, CEO of Remediant, a cybersecurity SaaS company that defends networks against lateral attacks. He was pretty hard on companies that expect users to protect the network. Look for a larger article on game platform breaches in Cyber Protection Magazine --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

One of my favorite security gurus, Ian Thornton-Trump sent me a text recently about the top-five security failures in recent history that we have yet to learn from. So I decided to call him and ask what he meant. It's worth listening to. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

The Metaverse can be used for immersive education that can engage students and enhance the experiential aspects of education. It certainly makes for more interesting field trips. But the potential for disaster looms.  Luckily there are some, while recognizing the upsides of the technology, who take a very realistic view of the potential downsides. One of them is Jaime Donnelly. Donnelly is an author, and speaker on immersive technology for education. She’s also the engagement director for Identity Automation, a company dedicated to identity and access management tools for K-12 and universities. She is also a great promoter for the future of immersive technology for education. We sat down to chat about her extensive collection of VR goggles and her realistic expectations. She makes an old curmudgeon feel a bit better about the future. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

The week after #RSAC2022 seems to be a good time to start a new season of Crucial Tech, so here we go. I talked to a lot of people at the conference about how to keep foreign agents out of your network and some of what I learned is in a larger article in Cyber Protection Magazine, but.I went to someone who wasn't there -- Grant Wernick, CEO of #Fletch -- to chat about the problem, how to find them and how to stop them from doing real damage. Grant gave me a view into how you can find them and root them out once they infiltrate. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

I'm going to the RSA Conference in San Francisco this week, so I didn't do a full episode yet. This is a preview of what's to come so stay tuned. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

The realities of cyberattacks are not going away. Based on what we know, we have no idea how big the problem is because a lot of individuals and organizations just don’t report attacks. Conservatively, Cyber Protection Magazine estimates that half of all the attacks are unreported. More knowledgeable people than us say it's more like 90 per cent. As we have reported in past podcasts, that is likely due to a combination of complacency and just not knowing what to do. We talked to Emil Sayegh, CEO of Ntirety, a company that helps small to midsize organizations reach security compliance with best practices and new privacy legislation. Ntirety is one of dozens of similar companies that are doing quite well. Sayegh claims they have 2400 customers, which is impressive in and of itself. But 2400 customers is a long way from any one industry being protected. Even 240,000 would be a drop in the bucket. That doesn’t mean you have to be their customer, or a customer of any competitor to get started.

Sayegh outlined a f

Joe Basques and I took our time to talk about personal priorities in cybersecurity and in the process we ended up talking about secure browsers, privacy, abortion, state surveillance and recalling recent podcasts with Chase Cunningham and Supreet Manchanda. The upshot is we are entering a time where personal responsibility remains the single biggest determinant of vulnerability. Don't skip over and don't ignore this episode. Your finances, personal privacy and the fate of the nation is is your hands.  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

Most individuals and businesses know they need to address cybersecurity, but they don't know where to start. That's understandable because the digital world is like a sieve with thousands of holes. You may patch most of them but there are always a few for criminals to slip through. The question is, what are the most important holes to plug. The Zero Trust approach is proving to be the most comprehensive solution to security, but even then there are dozens of ways and companies dedicated to achieving a Zero Trust paradigm. Where should you look? Well, Dr. Chase Cunningham, Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) at Ericom Software, has created something that might help. It's an online market map listing the applications and solution providers for Zero Trust. We spent some time talking about how he developed it and how it can help people and organizations navigate the Zero Trust rapids. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

The SEC is considering requiring corporations provide a board seat to the CISOs. It's something I've seen as long overdue especially considering how security illiterate most boards are. And in the start-up world that literacy needs to start with venture capitalists. I decided to talk to one of my favorite entrepreneurial investors, Supreet Manchanda, and ask him what he thought an investor's role in security would be. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support