The Defender's Advantage Podcast

Michael Raggi (Principal Analyst, Mandiant Intelligence) joins host Luke McNamara to discuss Mandiant's research into China-nexus threat actors using proxy networks known as “ORBs” (operational relay box networks). Michael discusses the anatomy and framework Mandiant developed to map out these proxy networks, how ORB networks like SPACEHOP are leveraged by China-nexus APTs, and what this all...

Mandiant Principal Analysts John Wolfram and Tyler McLellan join host Luke McNamara to discuss their research in the "Cutting Edge" blog series, a series of investigations into zero-day exploitation of Ivanti appliances.  John and Tyler discuss the process of analyzing the initial exploitation, and the attribution challenges that emerged following the disclosure and widespread exploitati...

Jurgen Kutscher, Mandiant Vice President for Consulting, joins host Luke McNamara to discuss the findings of the M-Trends 2024 report.  Jurgen shares his perspective on the "By the Numbers" data, the theme of evasion of detection in this year's report, and how Mandiant consultants have been leveraging AI in purple and red teaming operations.  For more on the M-Trends 2024 report: ht...

Kimberly Goody, Head of Mandiant's Cyber Crime Analysis team and Jeremy Kennelly, Lead Analyst of the same team join host Luke McNamara to breakdown the current state of ransomware and data theft extortion. Kimberly and Jeremy describe how 2023 differed from the activity they witnessed the year prior, and how changes in the makeup of various groups have played out in the threat landscape, why...

Host Luke McNamara is joined by Mandiant consultants Shanmukhanand Naikwade and Dan Nutting to discuss hunting for threat actors utilizing "living off the land" (LotL) techniques. They discuss how LotL techniques differ from traditional malware based attacks, ways to differentiate between normal and malicious use of utilities, Volt Typhoon, and more. 

Morgan Adamski, Director of the NSA's Cybersecurity Collaboration Center (CCC) joins host Luke McNamara to discuss the threat posed by Volt Typhoon and other threat actors utilizing living off the land (LotL) techniques, zero-day exploitation trends, how the CCC works with private sector organizations,  and more. 

Principal Analyst Michael Barnhart joins host Luke McNamara to discuss Mandiant's research into the threat posed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) usage of IT workers to gain access to enterprises.  For more on Mandiant's analysis of North Korea's cyber capabilities, please see: https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/north-korea-cyber-structure-alignme...

Taylor Lehmann (Director, Google Cloud Office of the CISO) and Bill Reid (Security Architect, Google Cloud Office of the CISO) join host Luke McNamara to discuss their takeaways from the last year of threat activity witnessed by enterprises within healthcare and life sciences. They discuss applying threat intelligence to third-party risk management, threat modeling, and more.  For more on the work...

Mandiant Intelligence Advisor Renze Jongman joins host Luke McNamara to discuss his  blog on the CTI Process Hyperloop and applying threat intelligence to the needs of the security organization and larger enterprise.  For more on this topic, please see: https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/cti-process-hyperloop

For our first episode of 2024, host Luke McNamara is joined by Mandiant Senior Technical Director Jose Nazario and Principal Analysts Alden Wahlstrom and Josh Palatucci, to discuss the hacktivist DDoS activity they tracked over the last year. 

Doug Bienstock and Josh Madelay, Regional Leads for Mandiant Consulting, join host Luke McNamara to walk through some of the trends they have witnessed responding to breaches in 2023.  Josh and Doug cover what is happening with business email compromise (BEC), common initial infection vectors, social engineering tactics, and more. 

Host Luke McNamara is joined for this special episode highlighting October as Cybersecurity Awareness Month by Kevin Mandia and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Secretary Mayorkas and Kevin discuss the threat landscape,  collaboration between the private sector and government, improving the talent gap in cyber, and ongoing DHS initiatives to foster greater cyber security.  For more on the Departm...

Host Luke McNamara is joined by Amitai Cohen, Attack Vector Intel Lead at Wiz to discuss trends in cloud security, managing risk, and more.  For more on Wiz's research, please see: https://www.wiz.io/blog and https://www.wiz.io/crying-out-cloud 

Host Luke McNamara is joined by Kristina Balaam, Staff Threat Researcher at Lookout, to discuss her work attributing two new mobile malware families to APT41.  For more on Lookout's report on WyrmSpy and DragonEgg: https://www.lookout.com/threat-intelligence/article/wyrmspy-dragonegg-surveillanceware-apt41 Follow Kristina on X @chmodxx_

Charles Carmakal, CTO for Mandiant Consulting, joins host Luke McNamara to discuss the long tail impact of FIN11's compromise of the MOVEit file transfer solution. Charles breaks down some of the differences with this compromise in comparison to FIN11's previous operations, why the impact from this operation may impact organizations for some time, and what this spells for the changing la...

Dr. Jamie Collier (Senior Threat Intelligence Advisor, Mandiant) joins host Luke McNamara to discuss the recent white paper from Mandiant about developing a requirements-driven approach to intelligence, challenges organizations face in this area, and the importance of recurring stakeholder feedback to a well-functioing CTI team.  Follow Jamie at @TheCollierJam on Twitter.  For more on A Requiremen...

Dan Wire from Mandiant joins host Kerry Matre to discuss the ins and outs of crisis communications during a breach as well as what you can do to prepare for a crisis.

Ryan Tomcik, Dan Fenwick, and Tim Martin join host Luke McNamara to discuss how Managed Defense conducts proactive hunting, illustrated by several UNC961 intrusions.  For more, please see: https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/unc961-multiverse-financially-motivated Follow Ryan @heferyzan and Tim @Sa1jak on Twitter. 

What role do executives and the board play in cybersecurity and breach management. Hear from Jesse Jordan and Howard Israel of Mandiant discuss their experiences helping executives get the right information from their security leaders and understanding their role during a breach.

The endless battle of threat actors versus cybersecurity professionals may come down to who deploys AI better.  In this interview from RSA, John Hultquist, Senior Manager, Mandiant Intelligence, surmises how the bad guys may use AI in the near future to scale attacks, while Vijay Ganti, Head of Product Management, Threat Intelligence, Detection & Analytics for Google Cloud Security, walks thro...

Mandiant's Kirstie Failey and Jake Nicastro join host Luke McNamara to break down the findings from the 2023 M-Trends report. Kirstie and Jake cover some of the notable trends gleaned from Mandiant breach investigations over the past year around dwell time, ransomware, top initial intrusion vectors, and more.  For more on Mandiant's 14th iteration of M-Trends, check out: https://www.mand...

Jonathan Cran, Lead for Mandiant Attack Surface Management at Google Cloud, joins host Kerry Matre to discuss the evolution of vulnerability and exposure management and how important comprehensive approaches are to mitigating cyber risk. Jonathan shares his experiences from BugBounty, penetration testing and working with customers to solve the growing problem of too many CVEs, too little prioritiz...

With the public release of Mandiant's latest named threat actor--APT43--guests Michael Barnhart and Jenny Town join host Luke McNamara to uncover how this espionage actor targets policy experts to support North Korea's nuclear ambitions.  Follow Jenny on Twitter @j3nnyt0wn and 38 North at https://www.38north.org/  Find Mandiant's full report on APT43 here: https://www.mandiant.com/r...

Jared Semrau (Mandiant) and Maddie Stone (Project Zero) join host Luke McNamara for a look back at the zero-day exploit trends of 2022. Maddie and Jared break down the differences in focus between their teams, and some of the interesting things they each observed last year.  Jared covers some of the threat actors that drove last year's trends in observed zero-days, and Maddie highlights how v...

Shane Huntley, Senior Director of Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) joins host Luke McNamara to discuss his team's work keeping Google users secure. Shane breaks down the research his team has done on the problem of commercial spyware vendors, and how that is impacting the threat landscape today. While this threat has evolved over the years as vendors come and go, Shane highlights dri...