The Cyber Ranch Podcast

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest is Luke Jennings, VP of Research & Development at Push Security, former Chief Researcher at Countercept, Principle Security Consultant at MWR…  He’s been around the industry.  Luke is passionate about tracking the evolution of attacks – how are the bad guys morphing and changing their game in response to our new defenses, and mor...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest is Adam Bateman, CEO and Co-Founder at Push Security, based in the UK.  Another of our cyber friends from across the pond!  Is a former director at the security consultancy MWR who were renowned in the industry for their specialist research and red team capability. Adam started off as a red teamer himself, and then went on to build a...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest is Geoff Hancock, 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 Cybers...

In this SPECIAL EDITION! Allan interviews the 3 CISOs who created the CISO XC series of conferences: Cecil Pineda Jaimin Shah Randy Potts CISO XC is the only conference for CISOs (and their reports) that is put on my a team of 3 CISOs and an awesome all-CISO advisory board. And the amount of money CISO XC gives to charity is MIND BOGGLING.  Hint:  This years's goal is greater than some CISO's sala...

Allan takes the show on the road again, this time at his all-time favorite conference: CISO XC! He asks a unique question of each guest, who represent a great deal of breadth in our industry: Dave Belanger, CISO at Bestow Insurance - What is the most effective way to demonstrate and communicate security program progress to the board? Tera Davis, CEO at CyberOne Security – How does a vendor forge r...

Howdy, y'all!  Allan is taking this week off to spend time with family and to give thanks for all the wonderful things in his life - including y'all! For those who don't track it, there is no Cyber Ranch Podcast four times  a year: American Thanksgiving week Christmas week Black Hat week RSA week That gives Allan enough breaks throughout the year to preserve his sanity. Y'all be good now!

Warning, there might be some naughty language in this one! The challenge was issued!!!! Allan teamed up with TWO other podcasts to take on the insufferable marketing that floods the cybersecurity industry in the month of October! Who won??? "Won"? That's right!  Allan, along with George  K and George A from Bare Knuckles & Brass Tacks joined forces with Aaron Pritz and Cody Rivers of Simply So...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest today is Evan Wolff, partner at Crowell & Moring, and Allan's favorite cyber attorney.  Evan has led and managed 100s of investigations including cybersecurity, data breach, insider threats, security incidents and suspected terrorist incidents. Evan also teaches a class at Columbia University in New York City on “Great Hacks in C...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  That’s Tim Rohrbaugh, Founder/Principal at DefaultDenySec, former CISO for JetBlue Airways, advisor, investor: yup!  Another Cyber Ranch guest with an awesome history!  Tim and Allan were chatting a while back about budgeting cybersecurity programs, and they found out that they disagreed on a rather key point.  In true Cyber Ranch fashion, All...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  We're joined today by Jacqueline (AKA “Jack”) Powell, CISO at Allianz Life and former Deputy CISO at Hanes.  She has also consulted, and has worked at Chevron, General Dynamics, and SACI.  Jack has an illustrious career!  Jack is here today talking with Allan about the new SEC regulations about cybersecurity.  For our listeners, the final vers...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  That’s Kymberlee Price, strategic security consultant, Black Hat content review board member, former Sr. Director of Product Security at New Relic, former Principal Security Manager at Microsoft – Kym has held a variety of roles in our industry, but with one common theme: Kym is an outstanding team builder.  She has moved around the various fa...

Chris Tillett is a well-known figure in our industry.  He is in product management and R&D at Palo Alto Networks.  He is also a great guy, funny, and can wield the snark quite well.  He is the perfect foil for Allan Alford as the two of them take the gloves off, pick on one another, and tear apart bad vendor and bad CISO behaviors.  LIVE!  At Black Hat!   The two tackle some of the most sensit...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Joining Allan this week is Ron Nissim, CEO @ Entitle.  Yes, this is one of our rare shows with a vendor as a guest.  Why?  Because in this case, the vendor was more highly informed than any of Allan’s practitioner friends he was able to query about the subject.  And what is that subject? Permissions Management.  One that we’ve never done a dee...

Allan is joined by AJ Grotto: William J. Perry International Security Fellow and Founding Director of the Program on Geopolitics, Technology and Governance at Stanford University.  He also serves as the faculty lead for the cyber policy specialization that the university offers through its master's in international policy program .  He’s also a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.  He’s talk...

Warning: Some naughty language in this show, but well placed naughty language! Challenge issued!!!! Allan has teamed up with TWO other podcasts to take on the insufferable marketing that floods the cybersecurity industry in the month of October! Who among you will win??? Win? That's right!  Allan, along with George  K and George A from Bare Knuckles & Brass Tacks joins forces with Aaron Pritz...

Nearly 43% of cyber-attacks are on small businesses. 82% of ransomware attacks were targeted at companies with less than 1000 employees. 61% of SMBs were the target of a Cyberattack in 2021. 37% of companies hit by ransomware had fewer than 100 employees. And yet... 36% of small businesses have no concern whatsoever about cyberattacks. Another 59% of small business owners who have no cybersecurity...

You know you're being watched, right? Imagine for some reason you needed to bury a treasure where nobody would ever find it.  In today's society, how could you even do that?  How can you get from Point A to Point B without being observed or tracked in some way? Did you know that you can be listened to through smart lightbulbs? This episode features the infamous and always gracious Chris Roberts, b...

In this LIVE! show at Black Hat, Allan and his friend George Finney (recurring guest, CISO @ SMU, multi-times author and CEO of Well Aware Security) discuss cybersecurity in popular culture.  They talk about the impact on real-world cybersecurity practices of such non-fiction gems as Clifford Stoll's book The Cuckoo's Egg and such cheesy fictional accounts as the movie Swordfish. It might have mad...

Did you miss Black Hat this year?  Well you won't miss the great conversations that were had, as Allan captured so many good ones for this special Black Hat retrospective episode.   Did you get to attend Black Hat this year?  See if your experience was as amazing as Allan's!  This show is LIVE and untarnished.  It's the real Black Hat experience!   In this episode, Allan talks to (in alphabetical...

A brief thank you to our listeners and a request for feedback on the show. We'll catch y'all next week!

The OpenSSF is doing invaulable work for the cybersecurity community.  And their new managing director happens to be Omkhar Arasaratnam, whose appearance on the show a while back created one of our most popular episodes ever!  Omkhar is back to talk about the OpenSSF: What is the OpenSSF and how does it relate to the Linux Foundation? What is the organization's mission? What is the organization's...

Cloud security remediation can be a daunting task that impacts Dev, Sec and Ops teams all.  And it can be a huge, manual, pain in the...  You get the idea.  But there are techniques to navigate it and to overcome many of the common traps and hurdles. Tunde Oni-Daniel is a grizzled veteran in our industry who has managed to maintain his enthusiasm, passion and energy for the job.  Tunde is an exper...

In this episode, Allan and Drew tackle and interesting subject that was suggested by Drew and that Allan posted for the LinkedIn community to gather around: things we believe in cybersecurity that we cannot prove. The LinkedIn conversation was phenomenal, and Drew and Allan do a great job of summarizing it and calling out the underpinnings behind much of what we believe in this industry. Questions...

Kate is a legend in our industry, is a multiple times board member herself as well as having reported to boards in a wide variety of roles.  She is currently Chief Trust Officer at Aon.  Allan and Kate have intended to get her down to The Cyber Ranch for some time, but the stars finally aligned in this fantastic episode jam-packed with great advice.   Do please forgive the sound quality on this on...

This week Allan flies solo and tackles a variety of questions that came in from LinkedIn - including his origin story. Allan tackles the following questions: How does a CISO protect themselves from prosecution? How does one get value from a cybersecurity assessment? How should one pick a cybersecurity solution or company? How do you "disconnect" from cybersecurity? How to start and sustain a cyber...