Crucial Tech

Today ends the 10th season of Crucial Tech, 250+ episodes over six years and not a single repeat subject. Today we look at an aspect of cyber insurance not yet discussed as far as we can find: Why do so few cybersecurity companies carry cyber insurance? We bring in our friend and benefactor, Spencer Timmel from Safety National Insurance , to get that answer. We are taking a few weeks off before la...

If you are one of the smart people who have a subscription to Cyber Protection Magazine you will soon receive our next special issue focused on the rise of non-human identities (NHI) and their impact on society. If not, you get just this podcast with a hint of what is in the issue. We talk with Mike Towers, Chief Security & Trust Officer at Veza , about the meteoric increase of NHI. As a bonus...

This episode of Crucial Tech iis a bit different. It’s about technology public relations, rather than specifically about a product or service. Tech PR has a problem. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) already damaged the ability of practitioners to connect with members of the press and large language models (LLM) are destroying their ability to tell a compelling story to the press and customers. We...

I haven't been shy about rejecting the hype behind the coming of Q-day -- the day that a quantum computer exists that can break modern encryption. But I've always felt that the most powerful encryption available could somehow be bypassed. Talking with Crick Waters, CEO of Patero , my fears have been realized. And yet I am encourages. And we talk again with Spencer Timmel, head of cyber security in...

This week is a short one and a two-fer. ABC fired a long-time reporter for expressing an opinion on social media. One might be tempted to call it censorship and bowing to our weak and failing leader. But I understand the reason and took some time to explain it. But on a more positive note, I talked with Spencer Timmel of Safety National Insurance about the current retreat of the US government from...

Yes, AI is a problem in the hands of bad actors, especially when they use bots to automate brute force attacks on identity. There are also a ton of companies dedicated to protecting your identity to keep the bad guys from impersonating you and those you care about. One of those companies is Ping (no, not the guys that make the golf clubs). In a continuation of our series on bots, we talk with Pete...

A few weeks ago I posted what was supposed to be an interview with Dale Hoak, CISO for RegScale, on understanding Zero Trust. Unfortunately, the audio was of yet another interview that I have to repost on a different subject. That's what comes from having to wrangle 50 hours of fecordings from the RSAC Conference along with follow ups/. So, I promise, this is the right one.

During @RSAC Conference in April I met with Matthew Gracey-McMinn, VP of Threat Services for Netacea and we talked about the damage malicious bots can do. His company is one of a handful of companies dedicated to protecting users against that threat, in particular media companies. It was a short conversation and I decided it was worth going into a bit more depth.

Physical authentication keys are a common trope in movies, TV and spy thrillers and they have been around for almost 20 years. But they are still hard to find in real life. We talked with Alex Summerer, head of authentication for Swissbit, which is a relatively new player in the field, headquartered in ...of course, Switzerland. Frankly, after talking with him I'm wondering why I haven't b...

Still digging through dozens of hours of recordings and pages of notes from #RSAC_Conference last week. But while looking into the issue of bots, both good and bad, discovered a fairly recent story about how scammers use bots to steal financial ait. And as I always say, if I don't know about something, I know someone who does. So I called up an old friend, Craig Mosher, who teaches history and...

This was another exhausting #RSAC in San Francisco but I think I'm finally getting a handle on it. There will be more to come, but Bruce Schneier gave a keynote on Tuesday that I think bodes well for journalism. And we had a visit with our friend at Safety National Insurance, Spencer Timmel, about just how far insurance can cover cybersecurity wweaknesses.

This is a short episode previewing what I'll be doing at RSAC 2025 next week, kudos to the California Franchise Tax Board, and a how-to on working with the press.

There comes a moment in many abusive relationships, when observant friends encourage the abused party to leave the abuser. I consider myself a friend of the cybersecurity industry, aside from its bad marketing practices, I see it as important to the well-being of society worldwide. And that’s why I say now, it’s time to leave the federal government, at least for the next two years. The actions per...

When it comes to polite discussion, there are two things you should never discuss: Politics and Religion. At the same time, most people would also rather not talk about insurance or data encryption. Well, I can’t say I’m all that polite, because that is exactly what this episode is about. The need for encryption on or data has never been more important, but msot of us don’t know what is or isn’t e...

Microsoft haw cancelled plans for a massive build out of AI data centers and China is shutting down gigawatts or AI processing due to lack of demand. It seems the AI boom is on the verge of busting as big as the Dotcom collapse. And since cybersecurity companies seem dependent on the AI buzzwords to sell their services, that is going to mean change for the industry. We chatted with ThreatLocker CE...

The "Signalgate" scandal has raised the issue of encryption to a broader audience in the past week.  On the plus side, many sources say that 95% of digital traffic is encrypted now, compared to 43% in 2014, but most people have no idea that their personal data is being encrypted. It’s one of those invisible technologies that touch many people. But there is a basic fact, that a lot of stuff that sh...

As I've said before, I get a lot of "studies" and "surveys" from cybersecurity firms with breathless and urgent warnings about a coming cyber-pocalypse of one sort or another. Funny thing, it's always about something that they supposedly defend against. As I started writing this note, I got another one. I did one podcast about a survey from Huntress about phishing in Fe...

The DDoS attack on X.com this week provided a certain amount of schadenfreude for people less than enamored by Elon Musk. It also rang alarm bells in the cybersecurity community as that style of attack seems to be making a comeback, and not for financial gain. All indications are corporations, and, in particular, government institutions are not ready to repel attacks motivated by political revenge...

I get a lot of "studies" about the state of cybersecurity and most of them are poorly done. In Episode 10.8 I talked about one I like, from Huntress and the week it came out I got pitched another report from iProov that was, well, less than well done. And as much as I tried to help them focus on reality, the more they pushed back. Again, this is not a knock on what the company does, whic...

Artificial Intelligence is all the rage right now with broad claims about how it is going to change the world as we know it. I have my doubts about the hype and so does Bob Ackerman, the granddaddy of cybersecurity venture capital, founder and managing director of AllegisCyber Capital (for the past 29 years) and cofounder of the cyber incubator, DataTribe in Maryland. I always enjoy chatting with...

Today we are talking about insurance and government regulation... No! Wait! It's good stuff so bear with us. As the US administration seems intent on dismantling government protections in cybersecutiy, we will all rely heavily on foreign governments and private industries, like insurance, to keep us safe from cybercrime. The Digital Operations Resilience Act, that the EU put into force in Janu...

Phishing attacks are on the rise again with the help of sophisticated generative-AI tools. But new defenses and increased wariness among potential victims are blunting the potential for widespread harm. We talked with Greg Linares, Principle Threat Intelligence Analyst for Huntress regarding their annual Threat Intelligence report. It sounds grim, but in a new article on Cyber Protection Magazine,...

I am very far behind in writing stories and making podcasts. The events since January 20 have made it difficult to keep up. But today, while walking downtown I came across a brand-new independent book store That had a copy of a book dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Dream" speech. I attended that event, with my mother, when I was 11. It was a foundational moment for me. It is wh...

This week, we are talking to a lawyer. Maryam Meseha is a founding partner of Pierson Ferdinand LLC, a relatively new and large firm dedicated to digital security. In the first few weeks of the year, the new US administration has castrated the governmental infrastructure to make sure corporation keep customer data safe, especially in the area of retail fraud. It’s law firms, like Pierson Ferdinand...

I've had several discussions about the nature of censorship, the freedom of speech and moderation and I came to the realization that most people have no idea what sociial media moderation is. So I did a bit of a rant. We also are bringing back the top threat reports from Fletch for a bit of lightheartedness before the rant.