Crucial Tech

To kick off the new year and our seventh season, Joe Basques and I tackle the conundrum of distrust in media and why marketing doesn't work the way it's supposed to in the technology world. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

For the second year we are publishing predictions for 2023 in Cyber Protection Magazine by asking people and organizations to submit a brief, one-paragraph statement. Our friend and Cyjax CISO sent an entire presentation. And it was fun and scary all at the same time.,So we went with it. Check out the other predictions on the magazine and let us know what you think. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

A personal bank account was hacked this week, but because I was getting regular alerts from my bank we kept the damage at a minimum. As luck would have it, I had scheduled this interview with Bruno Farinelli of Clearsale who explained how even when you do everything you can to keep your finances safe, criminals have a way to get around your protections.  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

Guess what? Black Friday doesn't give you good deals and the ones you may be looking at may be scams. Take 15 minutes and get smart. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

A few weeks ago I was on a panel at San Jose State, #yesyoucan, about the future of democracy and how it intersects with technology and media. It went over an hour, which twice longer than what I normally do, but it included Harry Hursti speaking on election security and Sari Stenfors regarding a "hopeful future." After what we've been through the past few months, it might help. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

You've read the headlines about the stock market and the tech sector in particular. Self-proclaimed genius tech bros are hemorrhaging wealth, portfolios are crashing. But while the cybersecurity industry isn't completely unaffected, it is still attracting billions in new investment and private equity acquisitions. We talk to Brad LaPorte of Lionfish Advisors about why investments are falling in tech and why cyber is the new darling. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

I'm working on a story about some interesting numbers regarding the state of cyber crime. The number seem to indicate that, overall, we might be making progress on reducing it, though not eliminating it. But to be sure I've spent the past two weeks talking to experts about the numbers who are totally pessimistic and doubtful. One of them is Gerry Kennedy, CEO of Observatory Strategic Management, an organization that advises industry and governments about insurance issues. In our discussion he recommended other sources, which will be included in the article on Cyber Protection Magazine. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

Want some good news about technology? Stay tuned --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

I was pleasantly introduced to a non-profit cybersecurity company this week. Quad9 was established 6 years ago with the goal of reducing human error as the source of breaches, which makes of more than 90 percent of all successful cyberattacks. And they do it for free. Their website (www.quad9.com) has a lot of easy to understand and use tools to block malicious actors from accessing your systems and data. Check it out. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

The most innocuous things can be open invitations to criminbals to hack your data, or infiltrate your company. Adam Levine, cybersecurity podcaster and founder of Credit.com talked with Crucial Tech about "office phishing" and the "three M's" of personal cyber protection. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

Quantum computing is often in the news, mostly about how it's going to destroy the world as nation states bust the hardest encryptions around so they can steal national and corporate secrets. However, there are no quantum computers available today that can actually accomplish the task and, thankfully, there are whole industries popping up to deal with the worst aspects of the tech while encouraging some good things. We talked with Eric Garcell of Classiq, one of the companies dedicated to protecting quantum computing intellectual property, about why quantum computers are a good thing and that, in some cases, are doing good things now. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

I get a new report from a different research company almost every week about the state of cybersecurity. Most of them say the same thing, but I do read them all the way through. Recently received a report from a company called HelpSystems, a cybersecurity services company that works with some pretty big name companies and they issued a report that got me yawning almost immediately. But their research subsidiaries, Agari and PhishLabs, buried a couple of items that perked up my ears so I said yes to an interview. What follows is a 30-minute discussion about the report focusing on a couple of areas, hybrid vishing, and vulnerabilities criminals are using to target Office 365 users. John Wilson, senior fellow for threat research went on to talk about which email platforms are most popular for criminals and how criminal activity using cryptocurrency is on the rise. You can get a copy of the report here.big-name --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anc

Period and ovulation trackers have been around for quite a while but they are not, for the most part, privacy forward. In fact, according to the Mozilla foundation, only a few even have privacy policies. That is problematic for women in states that are criminalizing abortion where they are subpoenaing records of women even searching for options. Virtru, a security software company decided to fix that problem at and Def Con 2022 the demonstrated a concept app that put complete control of access to the data in the hands of the user. In preparation for Women's Equality Day on August 26, we talked with the team leader that developed the app, Cassandra Bailey, and the senior vice president of product strategy, Rob McDonald about the process. Unfortunately, they have no plans to make the app available to the public but have put the building blocks on Git Hub for app developers to run with. You can see a demonstration of it here. Maybe somebody out there will make a secure app. --- Send in a voice message: https:

As a journalist, I am morally bound to be objective. That's why, because I'm not a big fan of cryptocurrency, I have made an effort to give enthusiasts of the technology every chance to defend their positions. But I got a chance to interview Bruce Schneier about the subject and had to take it. I tried very hard to be supportive of the innovative uses of blockchain and its primary application in this interview. It didn't go well. But, boy, was it entertaining. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

Quantum computing has been in the news for some time but most people don't know why they should care. They should. Jack Hidary, CEO of SandboxAQ explains why. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

Even the promising announcements from Apple and Google about the end of passwords is going to take a long time to spread through the user base. But the technology exists to make them disappear if only we weren’t so stubborn about using them. We talked to Boian Simic, CEO of HYPR, a company making true passwordless tech… that is yet available to anyone but the wealthiest among us. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

The wildly popular massive-multiplayer online games don't make the news much for big security breaches, but it appears they are vulnerable to lateral attacks that can steal data and abuse children. The companies that run these platforms tend to blame the users for breaching security. We spent some time with Raj Dodhiawala, CEO of Remediant, a cybersecurity SaaS company that defends networks against lateral attacks. He was pretty hard on companies that expect users to protect the network. Look for a larger article on game platform breaches in Cyber Protection Magazine --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

One of my favorite security gurus, Ian Thornton-Trump sent me a text recently about the top-five security failures in recent history that we have yet to learn from. So I decided to call him and ask what he meant. It's worth listening to. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

The Metaverse can be used for immersive education that can engage students and enhance the experiential aspects of education. It certainly makes for more interesting field trips. But the potential for disaster looms.  Luckily there are some, while recognizing the upsides of the technology, who take a very realistic view of the potential downsides. One of them is Jaime Donnelly. Donnelly is an author, and speaker on immersive technology for education. She’s also the engagement director for Identity Automation, a company dedicated to identity and access management tools for K-12 and universities. She is also a great promoter for the future of immersive technology for education. We sat down to chat about her extensive collection of VR goggles and her realistic expectations. She makes an old curmudgeon feel a bit better about the future. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support

The week after #RSAC2022 seems to be a good time to start a new season of Crucial Tech, so here we go. I talked to a lot of people at the conference about how to keep foreign agents out of your network and some of what I learned is in a larger article in Cyber Protection Magazine, but.I went to someone who wasn't there -- Grant Wernick, CEO of #Fletch -- to chat about the problem, how to find them and how to stop them from doing real damage. Grant gave me a view into how you can find them and root them out once they infiltrate. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crucialtech/support