CISO Series Podcast

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BONUS EPISODE: Innovators Spotlight Oct 18, 2020

Show notes

All links and images for this episode can be found on CISO Series (https://cisoseries.com/bonus-episode:-innovators-spotlight/)

What makes a security solution innovative? Where do you think security desperately needs innovation? And what do you look for in a security vendor's presentation?

On this very special bonus episode of CISO/Security Vendor Relationship Podcast, I invite two special guests, David Tyburski, CISO, Wynn Resorts and Matt Crouse (@mattcrouse), CISO, Taco Bell to answer that very question AND determine if any of the three competing security vendors during the Evanta 2020 Global CISO Virtual Executive Summit were in fact innovative.

Our three competitors (and also sponsors) were:

John Worrall (@jworrall), CEO, ZeroNorth

Nick Halsey (@nickhalsey), CEO, Okera

Demetrios Lazarikos, CEO and co-founder, Blue Lava

Thanks to these sponsors and Evanta for their support on this episode.

A Phish So Insidious You Can't Help But Be Jealous Oct 13, 2020

Show notes

All links and images for this episode can be found on CISO Series (https://cisoseries.com/a-phish-so-insidious-you-cant-help-but-be-jealous/)

Wait, that's a phish even I'd fall for.

This episode is hosted by me, David Spark (@dspark), producer of CISO Series and founder of Spark Media Solutions and Mike Johnson. Our guest this week is Matt Crouse, CISO, Taco Bell.

Huge thanks to our sponsor, CloudKnox.

CloudKnox Security is the market leader within Gartner's newly defined Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) segment. CloudKnox transforms how organizations implement the principle of least privilege in the cloud and empowers security teams to proactively address accidental and malicious credential misuse by continuously detecting and mitigating insider risks.

On this week's episode

Here's some surprising research

Here's a depressing statistic. Ninety four percent of security and business leaders say they've suffered "one or more business-impacting cyberattacks in the last year — that is, an attack resulting in a loss of customer, employee, or other confidential data; interruption of day-to-day operations; ransomware payout; financial loss or theft; and/or theft of intellectual property." This according to a Forrester Consulting study sponsored by Tenable. Do we accept the sobering fact that a business-impacting cyberattack is an annual inevitability? And if so, what percentage of a CISO's job is putting systems in place to minimize damage, and what are ways you do that?

If you're not paranoid yet here's your chance

Get ready for a really nasty phishing attack. Craig Hays, bug bounty hunter particularly interested in phishing, tells a story of a wormable phish that after taking over one user's email account began to reply to legitimate email threads from that account. The phisher would actually read the thread and create a relevant response, but with a phishing link which would then compromise another user's email account in the same way. And the phisher would repeat the process from yet another account, causing this wormable phish to spread not just through the initially targeted company, but through their partners, suppliers, and their partners and suppliers.

At the time Craig's company didn't have multi-factor authentication (MFA) implemented to which Craig realizes that would stop such an attack. Yet, in the end he was very impressed with this type of attack because it has so many indicators of legitimacy. Have we experienced a similar attack and/or do we have a "favorite" phishing attack in terms of its effectiveness?

What's Worse?!

Audit season is about to begin.

What would you advise?

On the Cybersecurity subreddit, GenoSecurity asks, "What types of projects would look good on a resume since I have no work experience. I am also open to projects that might not look as good but are good for beginners since I'm currently working on my Net+ cert."

Close your eyes and visualize the perfect engagement

Last Friday we had an online after party using a new tool called Toucan which simulates a real party in a virtual setting. We've also used a platform called Icebreaker that allows for one-on-one random meetups. And last week I participated in a table top cyberthreat exercise with Bruce Potter of Expel and Shmoocon that ran like a Dungeons and Dragons role playing game. All were fun and had their value. Since the launch of the pandemic, how have we been able to socialize and stay connected in fun and unique ways?

Whether It's Vulnerabilities or Children, We Like to Pick Favorites Oct 06, 2020

Show notes

All links and images for this episode can be found on CISO Series (https://cisoseries.com/whether-its-vulnerabilities-or-children-we-like-to-pick-favorites/)

While you do have to claim all of your vulnerabilities and your children, you don't have to like all of them.

This episode is hosted by me, David Spark (@dspark), producer of CISO Series and founder of Spark Media Solutions and Mike Johnson. Our sponsored guest this week is Ben Sapiro, global CISO, Great-West LifeCo.

HUGE thanks to our sponsor, Kenna Security.

With Kenna Security, companies efficiently manage the right level of risk for their business. Our Modern Vulnerability Management model eliminates the friction between Security and IT teams about what to patch, providing clear prioritization based on real-time threat intelligence and guidance applied to each customer's unique environment across infrastructure, applications and IoT.

On this week's episode

Why is everybody talking about this now

Do you have a clear overall picture of how you're protecting your environment? The Cyber Defense Matrix, an open source tool created by Sounil Yu, a former guest, offers a simple five-by-five grid with the x-axis being the five operational functions of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and the Y-axis are the five asset classes cyber professionals are trying to secure (devices, applications, networks, data, users). The idea is you are supposed to fill in all 25 squares as best as possible to see where you might have gaps in your security program. Ross Young, CISO, Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation, and a recent guest on this show, has adapted the matrix, by changing the Y-axis to four risks of phishing, ransomware, web app attacks, third party risks.

So what's a better way of building out at your security program: by the assets that you're trying to protect or the risks that you're facing? What are the pros and cons of each method?

Can you change Mike's mind

On a previous show Mike said he is NOT a fan of security through obscurity. Utku Sen of HackerOne argues that security through obscurity is underrated. His argument was that adding "obscurity" is often costless and it adds another layer in your defense in depth program. It is far from bulletproof, but obscurity reduces the likelihood which lowers your overall risk. Examples he included were obfuscating your code in your program, and/or using random variables in the code.

Can we change Mike's mind? Is there a level of security through obscurity he has deployed and/or would consider?

What's Worse?!

What's better? Good and bad data or no data?

Please, enough! No, more.

Today's topic is vulnerability management, or specifically, vulnerability remediation. What have you heard enough of on vulnerability management, and what would you like to hear a lot more?

Question for the board

What misconceptions does the board have of the role of the CISO? On LinkedIn, Amar Singh of Cyber Management Alliance Limited, listed off what the CISO is and, isn't, and what inappropriate demands are made on them. He said the CISO is -NOT a super-being or a magician -NOT there to fix IT blunders -NOT the only guardian of the realm -Unable to STOP all cyber-attacks. -NOT a scapegoat/sacrificial lamb -NOT accountable but responsible

We often get the sense that CISOs do play these roles as they come in and out. What can be done to temper these beliefs? "

I Want to, but... I Just Can't Trust Your Single Pane of Glass Sep 29, 2020

Show notes

All links and images for this episode can be found on CISO Series (https://cisoseries.com/i-want-to-but-i-just-cant-trust-your-single-pane-of-glass/)

I've already got a view into my company's security. It's going to take a lot to get me to to dump it for your solution.

This episode is hosted by me, David Spark (@dspark), producer of CISO Series and founder of Spark Media Solutions and Mike Johnson. Our guest this week is Joshua Scott (@joshuascott94), former CISO, Realtor.com.

HUGE thanks to our sponsor, Kenna Security.

On this week's episode

First 90 days of a CISO

How do you define the likelihood of impact? Yaron Levi, CISO, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City, shared an article by Brian Spanswick of Splunk who discussed this process of building out a company's security program, and that mission should be "mitigate the likelihood and potential business impact of a breach while supporting an organization's strategic goals and business objectives." Our guest was Realtor.com's first CISO. He built their cybersecurity program from scratch. We talked about how he reduced impact while staying keen to the organization's objectives.

How do you go about discovering new security solutions

In the last three years, where have our guests successfully innovated in cybersecurity? Why did they do it? And where do they think they need the next innovation?

What's Worse?!

How much battle damage do you want your CISO to have?

Can you change Mike's mind

Mike inspired me to ask this question on Twitter, "What would a single pane of glass need to have for you to dump your current pane of glass?" This was has major argument that each single pane of glass requires him to dump his current one. The question is what type of mountain does a security vendor need to climb for him to unload his current view of his security program.

What Is It and Why Do I Care?

Today's topic is threat detection and I'm a little loose on this as I got slight variations on threat detection from insider threats, to SIEM, to just threat detection. I'm lumping them all into the umbrella of threat detection, but it'll be obvious which is which. Vendors send various pitches explaining their category and also explaining what differentiates them. Mike and our guest will determine which is the best and from that and I will announce the winners, but only the winners.

Security Is Suffering From DevOps FOMO Sep 22, 2020

Show notes

All links and images for this episode can be found on CISO Series (https://cisoseries.com/security-is-suffering-from-devops-fomo/)

Darn it. DevOps is having this awesome successful party and we want in! We've tried inserting ourselves in the middle (DevSecOps) and we launched a pre-party (shift left), but they still don't like us.

This episode is hosted by me, David Spark (@dspark), producer of CISO Series and founder of Spark Media Solutions and Mike Johnson. Our sponsored guest this week is Dayo Adetoye (@dayoadetoye), senior manager - security architecture and engineering, Mimecast.

Thanks to our sponsor, Capsule8.

Capsule8 is defining modern enterprise protection by providing detection and response for Linux infrastructure in any environment. Capsule8 provides host-based detection and investigatory data for incident response with on-going support. Unlike anyone else, Capsule8 mitigates the financial, scalability and reliability limitations of protecting your Linux infrastructure.

On this week's episode

Are we making the situation better or worse?

What makes a successful phish? On Sophos' blog Paul Ducklin writes about their most successful phishing emails. Ducklin noted that most of the successful phishes dealt with mundane and undramatic issues that still had a sense of importance. Looking at these examples they do seem to follow a similar pattern of something looking official that is being requested from the company and could you click here to check it out. Is that the majority of what you're testing? If so, what exactly is the value in conducting phishing tests on employees? Can the testing have a negative effect in security or even morale?

There's got to be a better way to handle this

What is the right approach to threat modeling? In a blog post, Chris Romeo of Security Journey opines that formal training or tools won't work. Security needs to ask questions of developers about features and then show them how a threat evolves, thus allowing them to ultimately do it themselves.

Adam Shostack of Shostack and Associates advocates for formal training. He says Romeo's informal approach to threat modeling sounds attractive, but doesn't work because you're trying to scale threat modeling across developers and if you tell one developer the information it's going to be passed down like a game of telephone where each successive person tells a distorted version of what the last person said.

So what's the right approach to building threat models across a DevOps environment?

What's Worse?!

What's the worst place to find your company assets?

Close your eyes and visualize the perfect engagement

Shifting Left. DevSecOps, These are the mechanisms that have been used to infuse security into the DevOps supply chain. While noble, both concepts break the philosophy and structure of DevOps which is based on automation, speed, and delivery. But, DevOps is also about delivering quality. So rather than inserting themselves, how does security participate in a way that DevOps already loves?

If you haven't made this mistake, you're not in security

On AskNetSec on reddit, Triffid-oil asked, "What was something that you spent effort learning and later realized that it was never going to be useful?" And let me add to that, it's something either someone told you or you believed for some reason it was critical for your cybersecurity education and you later realized it wasn't valuable at all.

Enjoying My Blissful Ignorance of Cyber Vulnerabilities Sep 15, 2020

Show notes

All links and images for this episode can be found on CISO Series (https://cisoseries.com/enjoying-my-blissful-ignorance-of-cyber-vulnerabilities/)

What keeps me up at night? Nothing! That's because I hold onto cybersecurity myths because it makes me believe I don't have a security problem.

This episode is hosted by me, David Spark (@dspark), producer of CISO Series and founder of Spark Media Solutions and Mike Johnson. Our guest this week is Dustin Wilcox, CISO, Anthem.

Thanks to our sponsor, Capsule8

On this week's episode

Why is everybody talking about this now

Kris Rides of Tiro Security asks, "When writing a job description in cybersecurity, what's your process?" What in the job description is most important that you want potential candidates to know? And do you have any universal requirements of all candidates?

Is this a cyber security disinformation campaign?

Stuart Mitchell of Stott and May posted an article from FoxNews on cybersecurity myths, such as I don't have anything worth protecting, I will know when something bad happens. From this list, or possibly another myth, which one do you think is the most damaging?

What's Worse?!

Public or government interference?

There's got to be a better way to handle this

Why are InfoSec professionals still struggling to secure their cloud environments? According to a study by Dimension Research, sponsored by Tripwire, 76 percent admit to having trouble. And only 21 percent they're assessing their overall cloud security posture in real time or near real time. What are the quarter of security professionals doing who are not struggling with securing the cloud?

Close your eyes and visualize the perfect engagement

Do we need more cybersecurity professionals, or do we just need our general workforce to be more cybersecurity minded? Phil Venables, Board Director - Goldman Sachs Bank, makes a good argument for the latter. Mike has mentioned that when he can make cybersecurity personal, like offering employees a password manager, they start to see the value. Assuming making security personal is the best tactic, what is the ripple effect of that? How do they approach security at your business and how do the efforts of the security team change?

Tell Me We're Secure So I Can Go Back to Ignoring Security Sep 08, 2020

Show notes

All links and images for this episode can be found on CISO Series (https://cisoseries.com/tell-me-were-secure-so-i-can-go-back-to-ignoring-security/)

I don't know anything about our state of security. I don't want to know either. But I do want to know you know about security and there's nothing I have to worry about. You can do that, right?

This episode is hosted by me, David Spark (@dspark), producer of CISO Series and founder of Spark Media Solutions and Mike Johnson. Our guest this week is Dan Walsh, CISO, Rally Health.

Thanks to our sponsor, Capsule8.

Capsule8 is defining modern enterprise protection by providing detection and response for Linux infrastructure in any environment. Capsule8 provides host-based detection and investigatory data for incident response with on-going support. Unlike anyone else, Capsule8 mitigates the financial, scalability and reliability limitations of protecting your Linux infrastructure.

On this week's episode

Why is everybody talking about this now

How do you respond to "Are we secure?" It's a loaded question that we've addressed previously. Daniel Hooper, CISO, Varo Money brought up this topic again that caused a flurry of discussion on LinkedIn. In the past Mike has mentioned that he talks about the state of his security program and where it's heading. The core of this question is anxiety about something a non-security person doesn't understand. How does a security leader break down this question into small parts, and what question should a CEO be asking if not "Are we secure?"

There's got to be a better way to handle this

The engineering team at Rally Health is around 800 and our guest Dan has a security team of 30+ of which only 5 of them are application security people. Those five are definitely going to need some help if they're going to have an impact on how secure the applications are. I ask Dan Walsh what he's doing with the engineers that's turning them into application security force multipliers.

What's Worse?!

How damaging is a bad reputation?

What do you think of this vendor marketing tactic?

CISOs have ways to retalilate against aggressive sales tactics. George Finney, CISO at Southern Methodist University told a story on LinkedIn about an unsolicited sales invite that was sent to 65 people at his school. He blocked the email. He asked the community if that was too harsh. Similarly Steve Zalewski, deputy CISO of Levi's said if he sees aggressive tactics by a company, the security team has the ability to block the whole domain from their servers. Are these tactics too harsh? Have Mike and our guest taken similar tactics, and/or is there something else they do in response to extremely aggressive sales tactics?

If you haven't made this mistake, you're not in security

How prepared do you need to handle your next cyber job? A question was asked on reddit from someone who wasn't sure they should take a job because they didn't have all the skills to do the job. Most people just said, "Do it." How would Mike and our guest answer this question as an employee and a manager. What level of unpreparedness for a job is acceptable and possibly even exciting? Could too much result in imposter syndrome?

Request a Demo of Our Inability to Post a Demo Sep 01, 2020

Show notes

All links and images for this episode can be found on CISO Series (https://cisoseries.com/request-a-demo-of-our-inability-to-post-a-demo/)

It's really easy to include "Request a Demo" button on our site. But potential buyers would actually like to just watch a demo on our site. Should we actually expend just a little more effort to record a demo and upload it to our site?

This episode is hosted by me, David Spark (@dspark), producer of CISO Series and founder of Spark Media Solutions and Mike Johnson. Our guest this week is Ross Young, CISO, Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation.

Thanks to our sponsor, Kenna Security.

On this week's episode

Why is everybody talking about this now?

Our guest posted about the 10+ daily product pitches he receives and he suggested that vendors place a product demo on their site. It just so happens, I also posted about this on LinkedIn. I am astonished that not every vendor spends their first marketing dollars on creating a product demo and posting that video. If a security practitioner is interested in a company, how do they begin their research? What do they look for? Do they watch product demo videos? Do they click the "request a demo" button?

First 90 Days of a CISO

Our guest shared a study from PWC that points out what management thinks are the most important roles for a CISO. Eighty four percent considered the ability to educate and collaborate across the business was critical making it the top most skill they look for in a CISO. At the same time, it appears investing in a talent management program for leadership was the least important with only 22 percent responding. What I read from this is management wants you to lead, and get the whole company on board, but do it alone. Plus, they expect you to be a perfect cybersecurity leader out of the box. Is that feasible? Is this why we're having so much burnout of CISOs? It's not just the pressure of protecting, but taking on all leadership responsibilities with no ongoing support?

What's Worse?!

How are you advertising for new hires?

There's got to be a better way to handle this

Turns out half of employees are cutting corners on security when working from home. This includes using home computers for corporate work, emailing sensitive documents from personal accounts. It's not malicious, but the distractions of work from home life and demands to deliver quickly are forcing employees to take the less secure route. Also, being away from the watchful IT and security gives them the breathing room to be less careful. Tip of the hat to Gina Yacone of Agio for posting this article from ZDnet about Tessian's work from home study. How can security leaders stay in contact with employees so they don't stray?

How CISOs are digesting the latest security news

What makes a security podcast valuable? What elements does a cybersecurity podcast need to have for you to say to yourself, "I'm glad I spent the time listening to that"?

The "Do What We Tell You" Technique Isn't Working Aug 25, 2020

Show notes

All links and images for this episode can be found on CISO Series (https://cisoseries.com/the-do-what-we-tell-you-technique-isnt-working/)

We've yelled, we've screamed, we've complained, and we've whined. Those darn users simply don't do what they tell them to do. I guess we're going to have to give empathy a try.

This episode is hosted by me, David Spark (@dspark), producer of CISO Series and founder of Spark Media Solutions and Mike Johnson. Our guest this week is Michelle Valdez (@scauzim), CISO, OneMain Financial.

Thanks to this week's podcast sponsor, PlexTrac.

PlexTrac is a revolutionary, yet simple, cybersecurity platform that centralizes all security assessments, penetration test reports, audit findings, and vulnerabilities into a single location. PlexTrac vastly improves the risk management lifecycle, allowing security professionals to generate better reports faster, aggregate and visualize important analytics, and collaborate on remediation in real-time.

On this week's episode

Why is everybody talking about this now

Why hasn't COVID spurned more disaster recovery and business continuity planning roles? This is what Stuart Mitchell, a recruiter at Stott and May, noticed. Obviously, he's not getting that much demand. The community says it's assumed already into many roles. I have to think BCP and DR are everyone's responsibility. If that's the case, has BCP and DR planning increased during this time? Why or why not?

How to become CISO

Are two CISOs better than one? Our guest mentioned that her company has split the CISO role. One, the head of tech, reports to the CTO and the other, our guest's role, CISO and head of cyber risk reports to the chief risk officer. How exactly does this work? And what does our guest believe are the pros and cons of splitting the CISO role this way?

What's Worse?!

This time, no matter what the answer, everyone's going to get in trouble.

And now for a little security philosophy

Chad Loder, Habitu8, said, "Us InfoSec experts spend too much time asking 'How do we get users to care more about security?' and not enough time asking 'How do we get security to care more about users?'" So I asked my host and guest that question, and more importantly, how has that learning about users improved their security team and overall security?

First 90 days of a CISO

William Birchett, CIO of Required Team Gear, asked, "When you start, how much do you know of what security posture you've inherited?" We've talked about this before, but I want you to answer in reflection. What were the biggest surprises (positive or negative) between what you knew starting out and what you discovered after 90 days on the job?

Set It. Forget It. Reset It. Repeat. Aug 18, 2020

Show notes

All links and images for this episode can be found on CISO Series (https://cisoseries.com/set-it-forget-it-reset-it-repeat/)

As long as you reset it and repeat, everything in cybersecurity is "set it and forget it".

This episode is hosted by me, David Spark (@dspark), producer of CISO Series and founder of Spark Media Solutions and Mike Johnson. Our guest this week is Brett Conlon (@DecideSecurity), CISO, Edelman Financial Engines.

Check out Tricia Howard's dramatic readings of cold emails.

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On this week's episode

Why is everybody talking about this now

On LinkedIn and on Twitter, I asked "Is there anything in cybersecurity that's 'set it and forget it'?" There were plenty of funny answers like "Passwords" and the "Off" switch. But there were some interesting answers like whitelists from Brian Haugli of Sidechannel security and ethics from Stephen Gill of Russel Holdings. So many treat security as "set it and forget it" but we know that's a path to insecurity. Regardless, is there ANYTHING in security we can set and forget?

Question for the board

Our guest claims he's got an awesome board. I don't think we've ever heard that on our show. In most cases there's either fear of the board or the CISO doesn't even get direct conversation with the board. I asked our guest what is it about his board that's so awesome and what tips could he give to CISOs to move their board into that territory?

What's Worse?!

Who is going to handle physical assets the worst?

If you haven't made this mistake, you're not in security

Alexander Rabke, Splunk, asked, "How should sales people handle situations when, in fact, you are a security company with a security vulnerability (he also talked about a product not working) - what do you tell customers. How do you like to see this handled by the vendor?" I know a first response is to be honest, but they want to hold onto your business. What's a way salespeople could go about doing that?

What do you think of this pitch?

We're not talking vendor pitches in this segment. We're talking candidate pitches. Gary Hayslip, CISO, Softbank Investment Advisers and former guest on this show has an article on Peerlyst, a platform which is unfortunately going away, about finding your first job in security. Hayslip's first tip asks, "What information do you have?" Researching yourself is good advice, but I want to extend that to a question that I think puts you ahead of the pack and ask, "What's your unfair advantage?" It's a question that I heard investor Chris Sacca ask startups and I think it can also apply to individuals applying for jobs. Agree? If so, what are some good unfair advantages from candidates that have put them over the top?

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