Crucial Tech

The genesis of this podcast was a convoluted pitch that was three steps removed from the client. A marketing company working for the client hired a PR agency to distribute a press release, who then farmed out the pitching to a freelancer. I tried to get some clarity on the pitch from the freelancer and it became apparent that she had never talked with the client. Luckily, I had already met with th...

Proxies are the largely hidden lubricant of the internet. They both protect us and make us vulnerable. The AWS and Microsoft Azure outages in the past few weeks were examples of what happens when proxies are correctly maintained. But as they protect our privacy they also protect the identities of bad actors luring us with their own malware. We talked with Sarah Ralston, CPO of Proxyware about how...

The journalism industry is in trouble and has been for most of the 21st century. But the advent of AI generated content has made professional journalists absolutely crucial not just to democracies but to business success. One of the most prolific and successful technology journalists is Bolaji Ojo. He has headed editorial efforts for the EETimes, AspenCore Media, the recently closed Ojo-Yoshida Re...

Our expanded coverage of the viability of the AI industry, and how it could affect the cybersecurity industry, continues with this episode. We've blown out our time limit of 30 minutes because we are talking with three entrepreneurs with less dependence on AI as a product feature. We talk with Tony Garcia, CISO of Infineo; Luigi Caramico, CEO of the innovative encryption company DataKrypto ; a...

We've been having a lively debate at Cyber Protection Magazine about the potential, dangers, and chances AI is going to survive in its current form. Co-editor Patrick Boch likes to say I'm something of a Luddite about it, and it's true (Luddites were not against technology, but were adamant about protecting workers using it). I like to say that Patrick is overly optimistic. But, then, He's a lot y...

I was attending the AI Infra Summit recently and was handed a book with an interesting title : AI Made Easy for Parents and was intrigued by the title. It is an easy read, but ultimately disappointing, at least from an educator's view.

More often than not, when I'm interviewing a corporate leader about the news they are presenting to me, I find a bit of news in their own content that they didn't see, That was the case when I interviewed Mike Wiacek, founder and CTO of Stairwell. The company is in a very competitive market with almost 250 companies dedicated to identifying malware before it can mess up your system, The re...

When it comes to the implementation of AI in a corporation, the question is not if or when. It’s more like, “How much if a disaster are we willing to accept?” A whole new industry niche is arising to help companies determine just how mediocre and unsafe they want to be. Tumeryk is one of those companies helping provide that insight.

The first of September began with a bang. I've got a lot to write and talk about, but barely had time to do this much. There is an AI infrastructure conference coming next week, along with a special issue on AI economics. But companies really need to start learning how to tell a story all over again. Generative AI and marketese is killing a lot of really good technology. Listen in and find out...

A few weeks ago I talked with Paul Valente, CEO of VISO TRUST . In the excitement of Agentic AI adoption, a massive security hole has opened and Valente's goal is plugging that hole. Our conversation adds a needed reality check to the AI euphoria/

I got a pitch from Reality Defender (deepfake video detection) about a partnership with ValidSoft (deepfake voice) last week. We don’t generally cover partnership agreements because, well, we get a handful every week and they just aren’t news. But the pitch threw out a few statistics that seemed a bit off. After some research, I found out how off they were. See, fraud can be divided into two types...

We are starting out the 11th season of Crucial Tech is a bang. I am completing an article on a significant security hole in AI agents that shows how the tech industry makes security an afterthought every, damn, time. One of the companies pitching a solution is Teleport , which manages identity access and I had a friendly but contentious conversation about it with their CEO, Ev Kontsevoy who insist...

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...