The Defender's Advantage Podcast

Whether it’s shipping disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic or compromises into software platforms used by hundreds of organizations, supply chain issues are back in the spotlight. In this episode of Eye on Security, host Luke McNamara is joined by Bryan Ware, CEO of Next5 and former Assistant Director of Cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Bryan sha...

While much of the discussion around modern ransomware campaigns has centered on threat actors from Eastern Europe and Russia, this episode highlights some of the lesser-known activity in a different region and explores how nations may experiment with asymmetric cyber capabilities in the future. In this episode of the Eye on Security podcast, host Luke McNamara sits down with Sanaz Yashar (Manager,...

Host Luke McNamara is joined by Jeff Compton, Senior Manager for Mandiant’s Intelligence Capability Development team to discuss the focus of his team in helping customers build threat intelligence programs and how the needs of customers in this space continue to evolve, and how the regulatory landscape is driving change in particular regions and industries. One of the things that Jeff in particula...

In response to an increasing demand to fill the CTI skills gap, Mandiant has made a commitment to arm organizations around the world with skilled security teams to succeed on the fast-evolving threat landscape. Host Luke McNamara is joined by Shanyn Ronis, Manager, Intelligence Training Program to discuss the official launch of Mandiant On-Demand Cyber Intelligence Training. Backed by 15+ years of...

On this episode we have Daniel Kappelman Zafra, a manager on Mandiant’s Cyber Physical Threat Intelligence team, to discuss a recent blog he and has team have released on the trend of lower sophistication threat actors targeting operational technology (OT). We discuss a precursor blog they put out last year, specific to this trend and the usage of ransomware by financially motivated actors to OT,...

Host Luke McNamara is joined by Paul Tumelty, Government Security Manager, to discuss how Mandiant is partnering with governments in EMEA to help foster cyber capacity building in nations across the region.  Paul walks through how governments are thinking about this, from the crafting of high-level strategies to working through the tasking of the appropriate entities for cyber defense, and establi...

In the latest episode of Eye on Security , we invited Jens Monrad, Head of Mandiant Threat Intelligence, EMEA to join Luke for a conversation on how the threat landscape has changed in the past year and how it continues to be impacted by the ongoing pandemic.   We reviewed the cyber events of the past year: pandemic-themed phishing, multiple APT campaigns against vaccine research and development,...

Mandiant Advantage , our SaaS platform, was always intended to house more than just our threat intelligence—and now it does. With the addition of Mandiant Automated Defense and Mandiant Security Validation, we are continuing to roll out new features in a platform that is easily accessible, as well as easy to deploy and scale.   Mike Armistead, SVP of Mandiant Advantage Products, joined host Luke M...

Have you ever wondered what it takes to develop our annual M-Trends report? The short answer is: a whole lot! Our host Luke McNamara asked Regina Elwell, Senior Principal Threat Analyst on the Advanced Practices Team, and Steve Stone, Senior Director for Advanced Practices, to take us behind the scenes so we can see exactly what goes into building an edition of M-Trends .   Steve started by discus...

We are wrapping up our “Big Four” series with a country that has been one to watch for quite some time: Russia. And who better to join me for this episode than our Vice President for Mandiant Threat Intelligence, John Hultquist. We started off this episode discussing how Russian cyber threat activity evolved to what we know today, from the days of Moonlight Maze and Agent. BTZ. We then shifted the...

The third installment of our “Big Four” series on China is filled with so much great information that it’s our longest episode yet. Lloyd Brown, Principal Analyst for our Custom Intel Team, and Scott Henderson, Principal Analyst for our Cyber Espionage Team, joined our host, Luke McNamara to peel back the layers of China’s cyber capabilities. Similar to past episodes in this series, we started at...

How does Reddit handle malicious or suspicious coordinated activity on their platform? Our host Luke McNamara asked Aylea Baldwin, Threat Intelligence Lead at Reddit, to answer that question and more during this episode of Eye on Security. During the discussion Aylea shared a few ways Reddit is unique compared to other social media networks—its tolerance for varying levels of behavior on different...

Did you know that women are disproportionately affected by cybercrime, cyber stalking, cyber bullying, cyber harassment, and image-based sexual abuse? We asked Cris Kittner, Principal Analyst at Mandiant Threat Intelligence, and Lillian Teng, Director of Threat Investigations from Verizon Media to join us for a discussion around their recent talk on digital safety for women and practical strategie...

We’re back with the second episode of our “Big Four” series focused on North Korea, Iran, China, and Russia. We honed in on Iran for this one, and to help explore their cyber capabilities, we invited Sarah Hawley, Principal Analyst for Mandiant Threat Intelligence, and Lee Foster, Senior Manager of Information Operations Analysis. Sarah kicked off the episode by providing an overview of Iran’s pas...

“Legitimate access rules the threat landscape”, says Jon Ford, Managing Director at Mandiant. In addition to loss of intellectual property, malicious insiders are increasingly impacting organizational reputation, customer trust and investor confidence. There’s a lot more to insider cyber security threats than disgruntled employees, which is the first thing that comes to mind for most when they thi...

While many cyber threats and security issues are universal and experienced by organizations in any part of the world, some are more common to a particular region than others. Host Luke McNamara invited Ryan Goss, Vice President for Latin America & the Caribbean, and Juan Carlos Garcias Caparros, Director of Mandiant Consulting for Latin America and the Caribbean, to talk specifically about cyb...

We’re kicking off Eye on Security in 2021 with a nation-state-themed miniseries that focuses on the big four, which we recognize as North Korea, Iran, China and Russia. In this episode, host Luke McNamara invited Fred Plan, Senior Analyst for Mandiant Threat Intelligence, onto the podcast to talk about North Korea. Fred started our discussion by providing some background on the country, how it ope...

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, cyber threats have worsened for some industries across the globe. Universities with medical and research facilities are increasingly being targeted by threat actors because of the critical and valuable work they do surrounding pandemic. Host Luke McNamara invited Monte Ratzlaff, Cyber Risk Program Director at the University of California Office of the President,...

With 2020 coming to an end, we’ve released our 2021 cyber security predictions report, videos with our senior leaders and more. Our host, Luke McNamara asked General Earl Matthews, VP, Strategy for Mandiant Security Validation to join him on 'Eye on Security' to discuss what we can expect in the cyber space heading into a new year based on the threat activity we’ve seen recently. Ransomw...

In this episode, we have something a little different. We're excited that Sean Lygaas (@Snlyngaas), Senior Reporter at CyberScoop, has joined host Luke McNamara to share a different perspective on many of the same cyber security stories and events that we work on in parallel here at FireEye. Sean and Luke kick off their conversation by discussing which stories Sean considers top priority. The...

Our customers expressed a desire for faster access to our intelligence to focus on threat activity that matters to them, so we launched Mandiant Advantage. Mandiant Advantage is a new SaaS platform that allows our customers to engage across all areas of our expertise, starting with threat intelligence. For this episode of ‘Eye on Security’, our host, Luke McNamara is joined by Jon Heit, Senior Man...

The cyber skills shortage is a real problem. There just aren’t enough qualified people to adequately meet the cyber security needs of all organizations, and the problem is only expected to get worse. One of the ways we address this challenge at FireEye is through internal and external training courses. We invited two people involved in those efforts to join our host, Luke McNamara for this episode...

Ransomware continues to be one of the most significant cyber security issues affecting organizations today. The attack is very effective and can be carried out relatively cheaply, making for larger net profits. With no end in sight to this nasty threat, Luke McNamara, our host and Principal Analyst for FireEye, spoke with someone who has a front-row seat into how organizations think about ransomwa...

Information operations (IO) gained prominent public attention in 2016 during the U.S. general election. Since then, new campaigns have continued to be exposed, and the tactics actors employ have evolved. In this episode of 'Eye on Security', Lee Foster, our Senior Manager of Information Operations Intelligence Analysis, joins host Luke McNamara to talk all about disinformation, a recent...

The Strategic Analysis team at Mandiant Threat Intelligence examines hundreds of discrete data points from numerous sources, distilling trends from that raw information to identify the most important, common, and damaging cyber threats clients should prioritize in their defensive strategies. That’s what we’re talking about on this week’s episode of Eye on Security with our guest Kelli Vanderlee, M...