Crucial Tech

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 again...

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.

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...

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 th...

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.

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 likel...

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 an...

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 compreh...

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...

Woke up this morning to the news that high-flying quantum cryptography company, Arqit, is being hit with fraud lawsuits in the UK and US throwing shade on the viability of its technology. In preparation for an article on the news for Cyber Protection Magazine I had a chat with Gerry Kennedy, CEO of Observatory Holdings, about the importance of the case not only for future standardization but to co...

Much of the West has feared Russian aggression since the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962. Then it was their technologically superior military. Most recently it’s been their vaunted cyber warfare capabilities. This podcast episode is about the one positive coming out of the Ukraine war: the Russians are not as scary as we thought they were. Oh, they are still scary, but scary like a feral, rabid house ca...

This is the day you should not just THINK about backing up your data, but actually DO it. It really isn’t that hard. It can be done while you re getting a cup of coffee. It can be done automatically, and it can be done for free for most people. We spent a bit of time outlining all ways it can be done without muss or fuss.

If you aren't a regular reader of Cyber Protection Magazine , shame on you. But this podcast might change your habits. We've created a list of secure messaging apps for you in the accompanying article with this podcast. And because we started with the article instead of the podcast, the details are there. But we decided to call Gerry Kennedy, CEO of Observatory Holdings and get a reality check on...

Cyber warfare has been an open secret for many years, but the conflict in Ukraine has brought it out into the open and includes more than government-sponsored hacking. Anonymous took out the broadcast network, Russia Today ( RT) with a massive DDoS attack, and the Russian Duma and several military servers were similarly hit within the past 48 hours. Meanwhile, Ukrainian hackers aligned with Russia...

The security of our schools is always a concern. Many have been targeted by criminals with ransomware, so when a PR rep talked me into an interview on "What teachers need to know about cybersecurity?" I thought it was a good idea. That interview didn't work out but I remembered I knew a guy. Kyle Brumbaugh is the Director of Technology and Innovation at the Redwood City School District and has bee...

Social Media companies have no real incentive to reduce the vitriol that fills their servers. The fact is that content that makes people angry is what drives engagement... and engagement means advertising revenue. It also makes a profitable hunting ground for cybercriminals. But that might not be the case over the next few years. Joe Basques and Lou Covey sit down to consider the sea change that i...

Biometrics is something of a broad topic because it relates to any piece of information about you connected to your body that can be used to identify you. That includes fingerprints, DNA, eyes, voice, faces, and even medical and dental records. As a result, biometrics are a hub for personal security, identity theft and government surveillance. Protecting that stuff is kind of important. The proble...

Personal data isn’t just about your name, phone number, credit cards and social security numbers. It’s also about your online habits. All that stuff is recorded, filed and analyzed by various companies, including your employers. That data can identify who you are and are as much a part of your digital identity as your user name and password. In fact, that data might be more accurate than your pass...

This was one of the scarier interviews I’ve done on this podcast. I’m talking with Paul Smith, country manager for Sweeft Digital, a UK agency helping companies manage their digital presence, including compliance with UK and Europe privacy regulations in the UK and Europe. He confirmed many of the concerns I have about the US versions of the GDPR, which do more to regulate whether users can stop c...

Welcome to the first episode of our fifth season and the first of 2022. Last year ended in a flurry of announcements, disasters, progress and new technology designed to keep us more secure and our last two interviews tied well into each other. We talked separately with Matt Morris, CISO at 1898 & Company , and Will Ruby, COO of FortifyIQ , and found that what Matt predicts is, in essence, the...

At the 58th annual Design Automation Conference in San Francisco, it seemed, at long last that the semiconductor industry is considering making their products secure, if only because they are being forced to. Standards organizations, not the least being the National Institute of Science and Technology, are creating mandatory minimums forcing hardware companies to force their chip suppliers to cons...

A few weeks ago we did a video demonstration of the Fletch.ai on the Cyber Protection Magazine Youtube channel , but wanted to share just the audio portion in this week's podcast because it's a solid tech gift for Christmas. Check it out.

For the past five years, the Mozilla Foundation has published reviews of products rated on their relative privacy aspects. The least private products are labelled "Very, Very creepy. We interviewed Jen Caltrider, Mozilla's lead in their Privacy Not Included Division and found what makes a product or service creepy. Hint: the better the price, the creepier it becomes. This will be available on Spot...

We interviewed Jen Caltrider of the Mozilla Foundation about the fifth annual Privacy Not Included list the foundation publishes annually and if you are thinking of buying some electronics as gifts or for yourself, you might think about referring to the list at www.privacynotincluded.org . Let us know if you ever consider privacy features when you are gift shopping.

Quantum computing is one of those technologies that causes hyperbole, confusion, and concern. A lot of the discussion is not much more than wishful thinking or uninformed fear. For most people, it will not affect them in their lifetime. That’s not to say it isn’t something to completely ignore. We talked to Alan Grau, VP of business development for the startup company PQShield in this week’s episo...