Crucial Tech

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...

It is a rare thing when a company claims to be the first to do something and actually is the first. Rarer still is when that company is actually solving a significant problem with their product. Upheaval ( upheaval.io ) appears to be among those rarities with a data security platform that prevents data theft, intrusion and could solve the problem of social media privacy. This interview may be the...

The tech world sees marketing as a necessary “evil” and does it poorly. The cybersecurity industry sees it as a mystery but duplicates what the tech world does, so their efforts are generally poor and clueless. Good marketing explains the reason budgeting a particular product is a good idea and where that product is most useful. Mediocre marketing looks for the lowest hanging fruit when the ripest...

Had a fun conversation with Tim Callan, chief compliance officer at Sectigo on the un-fun topic of phishing, smishing and whether social media platforms even want to stop allowing criminals to scam their users. There is hope... just not from Facebook. See more at www.cyberprotection-magazine.com

I've spent some long, frustrating hours trying to convince realtors to adopt proven technology. I can't imagine how difficult it must be, then, to convince them to practice good digital hygiene. David Moffat is trying to. We spent few minutes talking about how the industry's attitude can make everyone less safe.

I few weeks ago I was mercilessly cajoled by a PR firm to talk to the chief marketing officer of Sepio Systems , Bentsi ben Atar about their products and services. I don't do product announcements but I do talk about the problems the products were created to solve. So Bentsi and I talked for a while about how prevalent the potential for hacking modern vehicles is. And, apparently, public EV chargi...

The term “slippery slope” is applied to a lot of hypothetical outcomes of everything from legislation to technology. In the case of Apple monitoring the use of products and services for distributing child pornography it appears there are more than one or those lubricated hillsides. At Cyber Protection Magazine we are internally debating the benefit/risk ratio of this decision and decided to air ou...

I attended Black Hat 2021 virtually again this year and wrap it up in this grab bag of issues including #AI ethics, #cybercrime legislation, #ransomware growth and control, and building #cybersecurity community to compact the organization of cybercrime. Grab a coffee and take 25 minutes to get up to speed. 

I interviewed George Finney, chief information security officer for Southern Methodist University, a couple of weeks ago for a Cyber Protection Magazine article about the state of ransomware. It wasn't encouraging. But George is a very nice guy who also helps people and companies get their act together regarding good security practices. The entire conversation was illuminating, even though I had t...

I'm being bombarded with companies trying to get me to interview them about product announcements. If I can figure out a theme to put them in context I will do it. The past couple of weeks though, it's been almost impossible. But I needed to get a podcast out and this is it.

This episode of Crucial Tech is the beginning of a search for Holy Grail of cybersecurity: Products and services that actually make us safer without breaking the budget. There is no one company that delivers everything, but we found one that provides the crucial service of penetration testing that can give a small business a starting point for securing their data with both automated tools and enha...

For a journalist to decide what to cover and when takes some discussion and this week we decided to do our editorial meeting in a public setting so you can see how we pick what to report. In this episode, Joe Basques, Patrick Boch and Lou Covey look at the changing paradigm of Ransomware, the ethics of paying ransoms, Webscraping, Amazon Sidewalk and the state of security jobs.