UnHack with Drex DeFord

The future of AI resilience isn't just about firewalls and backups—it's about ensuring power grids, chip fabrication facilities, and cloud infrastructure can withstand attacks and disruptions. As AI becomes critical infrastructure, the question isn't whether it will change everything, but whether we can power and protect it without creating catastrophic business liabilities. Remember, Stay a Littl...

Multi-factor authentication isn't the bulletproof security measure it once was. Preston Duren , VP of Threat Services at Fortified Health Security , explores how cybercriminals are outsmarting traditional MFA through sophisticated phishing tactics and MFA bombing. The conversation shifts to the debate over platform consolidation—does fewer mean safer, or are we creating attractive single points of...

Cybercriminals are hijacking employee paychecks by exploiting outdated MFA systems in payroll platforms like Workday. Drex breaks down how attackers use sophisticated phishing techniques—including MFA fatigue attacks and session hijacking—to bypass traditional two-factor authentication. Learn why text-based and push notification MFA are no longer secure, and discover how phishing-resistant authent...

October 13, 2025: H ealthcare IT leaders are exhausted, CIO positions remain unfilled for months, and the pressure keeps mounting. In this candid conversation, Laura O'Toole , CEO and Founder of SureTest , explores why traditional CIO roles are transforming faster than organizations can define them. They discuss the widening gap between leadership expectations and operational reality, the critical...

Drex tackles an urgent emerging threat in healthcare cybersecurity: the explosion of AI-generated synthetic media. With Meta's new Vibes video generator and OpenAI's Sora creating hyper-realistic video content from simple text prompts, healthcare organizations face unprecedented challenges in distinguishing real from fake content. While watermarks and AI labels exist on these generated videos, the...

October 8, 2025: Bill Willis , CTO of IDMWORKS , joins Drex DeFord to unpack why healthcare organizations struggle with identity and access management despite having the right tools. Bill reveals how healthcare's seven to eight different user personas create unprecedented complexity compared to other industries, and why most IAM failures stem from data and process issues rather than technology gap...

October 6, 2025: New research reveals an expected 18% reduction in hiring over the next two years, but this isn't about downsizing—it's about strategic reallocation. Bill Willis , CTO of IDMWORKS , joins to discuss these new breaking statistics. With 62% of organizations prioritizing AI skills over traditional development experience, the industry faces a critical choice between reducing headcount...

Healthcare security takes center stage as Ascension's 5.6 million patient data breach leads to prolonged legal battles, while OneBlood settles after a ransomware attack that rippled through the blood donation supply chain. Meanwhile, a potential government shutdown threatens to furlough 35% of CISA's workforce, and the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 faces expiration, putting critica...

September 29, 2025: In this episode of Newsday, Drex is joined by Russell Teague of Fortified Health Security for a candid look at the storm brewing in healthcare IT. From the promises and pitfalls of AI to the growing sophistication of cyber threats, they explore how health systems are balancing innovation with risk. The conversation dives into financial pressures, shifting reimbursement models,...

September 26, 2025: George Pappas , CEO of Intraprise Health by Health Catalyst , joins This Week Health for the News. Together, they unpack the Salesforce breaches that turned cybersecurity companies into victims and the explosion of personal injury lawyers now chasing data breach cases. With class action lawsuits up fivefold and cyber insurance policies being voided for non-compliance, they expl...

The US Secret Service dismantled a covert communication network in New York City featuring 300+ SIM servers and over 100,000 SIM cards capable of overwhelming cellular networks. Drex explores the implications of this "fake telephone warehouse" discovered near the UN General Assembly, discussing how commodity hardware can create denial of service attacks against cellular infrastructure. Key takeawa...

September 23, 2025: Sahan Fernando , CISO at Rady Children's Health San Diego, reveals the split-second decisions that keep pediatric healthcare running while under attack. Navigating the stark reality that children's hospitals face the same sophisticated threats as major health systems but with a fraction of the resources, Sahan unpacks how forcing threat actors into high-visibility channels migh...

September 22: Today on Newsday Sarah and Drex speak with Jacob Hansen , Chief Product and Technology Officer at AvaSure , about virtual care, AI, and more from the news. Jacob highlights the company's focus on inpatient care, virtual observation, and AI solutions. They address the rising expectation for tangible ROI from EHR AI projects, the importance of pilot studies, and the role of virtual car...

Drex breaks down why AI models like ChatGPT sometimes fabricate confident-sounding but false information, calling it "bluffing" rather than hallucinating. He explores OpenAI's research on training gaps, alignment issues, and response pressure that cause this problem. For healthcare professionals, he shares practical strategies including setting explicit context rules, demanding source verification...

September 15, 2025: Patients now walk into doctors' offices armed with AI-generated diagnoses and treatment plans—but what happens when ChatGPT becomes your primary care physician? Ryan Bengtson , CEO and Board member at Panda Health , joins the This Week Health team to dive into this shifting dynamic while confronting an imminent government shutdown that threatens to pull the rug out from under t...

Qantas made headlines by cutting all senior executive bonuses by 15% following a data breach affecting 5.7 million customers. This episode explores why cybersecurity accountability should extend beyond IT teams to the entire C-suite, and examines how this approach could transform healthcare cybersecurity investments. Drex discusses the potential impact of tying executive compensation to cyber perf...

September 10, 2025: Terri Couts , Chief Digital Officer at Guthrie Clinic , and Rachel Weissberg , Head of Healthcare Provider Strategy (North America) at Neteera , uncover how a simple ambient monitoring partnership is quietly transforming long-term care. How do you detect when a patient is slowly deteriorating before traditional thresholds are crossed? The conversation explores the delicate bala...

September 8, 2025: Ed Gaudet, CEO and Founder of Censinet , joins the This Week Health team for the news. When SalesLoft's Drift chatbot breach exposes over 700 companies through a single API vulnerability, it raises an unsettling question: are we witnessing a preview of something much larger? The security experts shift seats and play the role of the hackers, answering where they would attack firs...

September 1, 2025: Cristian Rodriguez , Americas Field CTO at CrowdStrike , joins Drex for the news. What starts as a simple phone call to your help desk could be the beginning of a major security breach—but how do attackers make these voice phishing campaigns so convincing? Then, North Korean operatives successfully infiltrate major western companies as remote employees. How are these fake worker...

August 25, 2025: Margaret Ptacek , Vice President of Client Solutions from Experis Health , tackles three critical shifts happening in healthcare today. The conversation explores Hackensack Meridian's statewide hospital-at-home expansion and examines how healthcare systems can deliver acute-level care in patients' homes without compromising safety or quality. When staffing shortages threaten a new...

This week's cybersecurity updates cover three critical stories: Workday discloses a data breach connected to ongoing Salesforce compromises by the Shiny Hunters group, CEO impersonation scams using deepfake technology surge past $200 million in Q1 losses, and transcription service Otter AI faces a class action lawsuit over alleged mishandling of sensitive meeting data. Drex emphasizes the importan...

August 18, 2025: George Pappas , CEO of Intraprise Health, by Health Catalyst , joins Drex for the news. They tackle the pressing question of how CISOs can evolve from security scorekeepers into business transformation leaders who drive real organizational impact. As the hosts examine a recent White House initiative promising patient-centric healthcare, they question whether lofty proclamations ca...

Drex covers three critical cybersecurity trends: companies swapping full-time security staff for platform subscriptions (requiring premium salaries for contract managers), the rise of AI agents in both cyber defense and attacks, and voice phishing campaigns targeting CRM systems like Salesforce that have compromised major brands including Adidas and Victoria's Secret. Healthcare organizations face...

August 11, 2025: Josh Howell , Healthcare CTO from Rubrik , joins Drex for the news. They examine the spike of healthcare organization breaches in summer 2025, with threat actors now moving from breach to data exfiltration in minutes rather than weeks. Josh reveals research showing ransomware attacks trigger a 20-40% decline in patient volumes within the first week, but what happens when notificat...

This episode covers three critical cybersecurity developments affecting healthcare organizations. First, FBI warnings about Scattered Spider ransomware group targeting employees through Slack and Microsoft Teams, including their alarming tactic of creating fake identities to join incident response calls and monitor remediation efforts. Second, leaked chat logs from the Conti ransomware group revea...