The Cyber Ranch Podcast

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest is Nathan Case, who is a previous guest from a multi-guest show.  Nate has been a CISO, CTO, Strategist, consultant, CEO, and all kinds of other things.  His career is as colorful and varied as Allan's – maybe even more so.  Nat's chosen topic is “There is no such thing as security!”  So without further ado, let’s dive in! What do yo...

In this show, Allan interviews seven guests and asks them questions from a list of 21: Omkhar Arasaratnam “How do we leverage LLMs for our own use in cybersecurity?” "How do you challenge your own precepts and assumptions to stay current in your role?" Ofer Klein “How do you describe what you do in cybersecurity to someone at a cocktail party who knows nothing about cyber?" "How do you explain to...

In this show, Allan interviews seven guests and asks them questions from a list of 21:   Chris "Cpat" Patteson “Why do so many CISOs think cybersecurity insurance is snake oil?”   Johann Balaguer “People, process, technology - Which is the most important and why?” "What do you want your fellow community of CISOs to know?"   Lee Krause “What are we still doing wrong in cybersecurity?"   Ken Foster...

In this show, Allan interviews nine guests and asks them questions from a list of 21:   Dr. Deanna Caputo “How do you measure and articulate risk to the business?” “People, process or technology?”   Carlos Guerrero “How do we foster community in cybersecurity?”   Elliott Franklin “Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance – Which of the three is most important?” “What does progress look like in...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast… AND The Audience 1st Podcast!  What you are about to hear was recorded LIVE! at the CISO XC conference in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas (my very favorite conference!)  I am your host, Allan Alford, CEO of Alford & Adams Consulting.  I have co-host on this episode, Dani Woolf, of the Audience 1st podcast!    On her show, Dani interviews security...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast… AND The Audience 1st Podcast!  What you are about to hear was recorded LIVE! at the CISO XC conference in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas (my very favorite conference!)  I am your host, Allan Alford, CEO of Alford & Adams Consulting.  I have co-host on this episode, Dani Woolf, of the Audience 1st podcast!  On her show, Dani interviews security bu...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  That’s Drew Simonis, CISO @ Juniper Networks, former CSO @ Hewlett Packard Enterprise, former CISO at Willis – you get the idea.  Drew’s posts on LinkedIn are pure fire – not in the hot takes way, but because of the quality of the thinking behind them.  Drew has also been on the show a couple of times now, and we keep inviting him back because...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest today is Ankur Ahuja, 2x CISO, Ted-X Speaker, Startup Investor, Board Advisor, etc. etc.  Ankur is currently SVP and CISO at Billtrust, and he’s got some Big 4 in his DNA too (ten years, in fact!).  Ankur wanted to chat about how CISOs can drive business growth, so I asked him to come on down to the ‘Ranch and have a chat with me.  ...

Melanie Ensign is a communications strategist and corporate anthropologist for cybersecurity, privacy, and risk organizations.  She is founder and CEO of Discernible, a multi-disciplinary Center of Excellence for security, privacy, & risk teams. Her team includes experts in communications, product development and management, compliance, security and privacy engineering, and behavioral science....

In this episode, Allan tackles the idea of selling the CISO mission. He deconstructs the types of CISOs and the "selling" they must do.  Sometimes you really are selling, but most of the time you should be solving business problems. Allan speaks to: Business objectives met Business risks reduced Maturity And also deconstructs the art of selling itself. Hint: Business Impact Analysis is a valuable...

Our guest this week is Jonathan Rau, VP and Distinguished Engineer over at Query, and a proponent of what he calls "SecDataOps".  Jonathan is quite active on LinkedIn and his takes, though often spicy, tend to be spot-on.  Allan has come to enjoy following Jonathan's posts, and he was excited to have Jonathan come on the show and share his insights. Allan asks Jonathan, in a VERY lively conversati...

This is part two in our neurodiversity series.  Our guest roster this time also includes Dr. Ursula Alford, a psychologist who routinely works with the neurodiverse populace. The lineup of guests covers ADHD, Autism, challenges unique to women with neurodiversity, how leaders should manage neurodivergent team members and more. Y'all be good now!

Geoff Hancock is Deputy CEO and CISO for Access Point Consulting, Former Global Director and CISO over at World Wide Technology.  He’s also a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor at George Washington University and has held various C-suite and executive roles at Verizon, CGI Federal Advanced Technology, Microsoft, and Advanced Cybersecurity Group.  He is back at the 'Ranch this week to talk about C...

Join Allan LIVE! at Zero Trust World in Orlando as he asks 12 guests "What does Zero Trust Mean to You?" and a wide variety of other questions. Conference highlights are discussed as well, including hacker activities, hacker demonstrations, incredible talks, etc. Allan also learns all about The Tech Degenerates, and organization furthering partnership and comradery amongst cybersecurity vendors, M...

How does cybersecurity relate to the four horsemen of the apocalypse?  Famine, Pestilence, War, and Death?  In this episode, Dr. Chase Cunningham, renowned Zero Trust expert, author, instructor, Chief Strategy Officer, advisor, etc., examines the 4 conditions on our planet represented by the four horsemen, ties it all to cybersecurity, and then solves it all with Zero Trust.  It's quite a ride and...

Howdy, y'all!  Allan went down to Orlando, Florida and recorded three LIVE! shows at Zero Trust World, a conference sponsored by ThreatLocker.  This is the first of those three shows.   James Keeler of LMT Technology Solutions has a steady hand on the incident response wheel and a lot of experience under his belt as well.  After seeing James speak on a panel at Zero Trust World, Allan asked him to...

This week Allan is joined by Leigh Honeywell (CEO of Tall Poppy) Nathan Case (Federal CISO at Snyk), and Ryan Macababbad (Currently looking.  HIRE HER!), three cybersecurity professionals with broad backgrounds in cyber, and all three of whom are neurodivergent.   Allan in fact, has been recently diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, albeit 'high functioning' (as the diagnosis indicates) or '...

Fun fact:  There are more vulnerabilities and exploits below the OS layer than above it! CPUs, BIOS, Firmware, embedded Linux, FPGAs, UEFI, PXE...  The list goes on an on.  What are we supposed to do about that? Allan asked Yuriy to come down to the 'Ranch to discuss this issue with him.  Yuriy is CEO at Eclypsium, member of the Forbes Technology Counsel, Founder of the open source CHIPSEC project...

In this episode, Allan flies solo, as he is finally willing to speak on an issue he has been mulling and fussing over for some time:  the two-fold CISO laments of: "We have all the accountability and none of the authority!" "We don't own the risk - we advise the business" Allan is refuting both of these claims. Allan calls up examples such as project managers, contract lawyers, CFOs in his argumen...

We declared a while back that 'not having a seat at the table' was a tired CISO topic.  So we decided to solution the complaint. Hopefully we pulled it off. Join Allan and Jim McConnell, Principal at Ask McConnell, LLC and former Fellow in Corporate Security Protection Operations at Verizon, as they take on the challenge of solving this common lament. There is a fierce round of "answer pong" as th...

Pat Benoit, CISO at Brinks, returns to the 'Ranch to visit Allan and to chat about his newest achievement - Pat got a NACD Directorship Certification! Allan has often thought about doing this as well, so he got Pat on the mic to talk about his whole experience: Why did you do it? How hard was it? What was involved? What do you hope to get out of it? Did you farm around for alternatives? Is there m...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest is Ayman Elsawah, who, like Allan these days, is a fractional CISO and founder of his own security company.  He has done the fractional CISO thing many times.  He has also been a professor, a security consultant, and a cloud-specific security consultant.  His tenure includes eBay, NCC Group, Justworks and Masterclass.  Ayman and Alla...

This one was recorded LIVE! in Podcast Alley at the CyberMarketingCon 2023 put on by the Cybersecurity Marketing Society in Austin, Texas.   Marketing!?!!?  Say what!?!?   Yup!  Allan went down to Austin to catch up with industry players and to participate in the conference as a "creator", i.e., podcaster. While there Allan ran into his friend Tom LeDuc, CMO at Semperis, and he got Tom to hop on t...

Howdy, y'all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest is Andrew Wilder, Retained CISO at Community Veterinary Partners, Member of the Board of Directors at Washington University in St. Louis, Advisory Board Member, former Global CISO, former Regional CISO... He's got a real history in this game.  What we're talking about today is retained, fractional, virtual, and part-time CISOing...  ...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast! Our guest this week is John Checco, aka "Checco", who is overdue for being on the show we freely admit!  John is a presence on LinkedIn and in our industry.  He’s the author of “Zero Trust: From Aspirational to Overdue”.  He’s also involved, as you can imagine, in many other things – various advisory roles, ISSA roles, Infraguard roles…  He’s b...