Episode 93 - Securing Your Digital Employee Experience

In this episode I had a chance to have a candid conversation with Charles Henderson. Charles is a global managing partner at IBM and also happens to be the head of the X-Force team. IBM recently released the X-Force Threat Intelligence Index report for 2024.

While the report is delves into many different areas of Threat Intelligence, we concentrated on several key areas focused primarily on artificial intelligence:

• Pronounced increase in Identity attacks
• Understanding how more 'business-like' malicious actors are becoming
• Upcoming universal AI attack surface
  • How much do you think this will get wors? For example, I reached out to a couple of CISOs from some prominent local companies and one of their worries was and I quote, "Longer term I think we will have to worry about attackers trying to attack and leverage AI technologies that are being utilized by organizations."
• 50% is the expected market share threshold likely to trigger attacks against AI platforms.
• Evolution of malware delivery mechanisms. AI's part in Business Email Compromise. Another area of concern when I polled my CISO contacts was AI's ability to, and I quote again, "Easier to perfect grammar and templates for phishing and other social engineering attempts.". How do you think companies like IBM can start helping people combat these types of attacks?)
• Thoughts on OpenAI's Sora and its potential impact on security

Episode Charity:

The Corewell Health's involvement in the Blue Envelope Suicide Prevention Program. The School Blue Envelope Suicide Prevention Program trains middle and high school faculty and staff so that every school employee—from teachers to coaches and bus drivers—would know how to respond to a student who may express thoughts of suicide. The “Blue Envelope” protocol for crisis management was developed internally to quickly activate patient safety responses by communicating the code words "Blue Envelope."

Every person within a physician’s office became proficient in how to respond at a moment’s notice to a patient who may have thoughts of suicide. Through previous grant and foundation dollars, this program has been able to successfully train over 8,500 middle, high, and elementary school personnel across 156 schools within 53 different school districts. This training has resulted in over 2,000 interventions for students in crisis.

Episode Sponsor:

This episode is sponsored by IBM, who recently celebrated their 100th birthday! IBM is a computer solution company based out of Armonk, New York.

In this episode I had a chance to sit down in person with the always insightful and never dull cybersecurity leader, Jim Kuiphof. Jim is the Deputy Chief Information Security Officer at Corewell Health. The topic for this casual conversation is Understanding Your Personal Risk Tolerance. More specifically, it speaks to understanding the different between your own risk tolerance and the business's risk tolerance.

Jim has talked on this recently at events like Cloud Con and the Digital Services Summit. His ideas for understanding how to balance personal and business has been a HUGE thing in my professional career.

Talking Points:

• What is Risk?
• What is Tolerance?
• Understanding the difference between Personal Risk and Business Risk
• Why is it so important to understanding alignment?
• Diagnosing the Dissonance
• What do you do about it?
• What does taking ownership look like?
• Maintaining risk tolerance alignment

This talk is not only useful for people in the cybersecurity industry, but across all of information technology. It does matter what level you are at, this information can help you!

In this episode I had a chance to speak with Bryan 'Woody' Woodworth around simplifying and securing multi-cloud networking. Bryan is the Director of Solution Strategy for Aviatrix. As we are a few weeks into 2024 and the importance of understanding and utilizing multi-cloud strategies is becoming more and more apparent. 

Talking Points:

• What are the current trends in the industry pertaining to multi-cloud?
• Skills Gaps - More pronounced in Multi-Clouds, FinTech and Banking industries will 'mandate' what environments you use.
• What are the areas where skill gaps can be addressed
• Secure Cloud Networking Field Report Sneak Peak
• What kind of tools can you give them and creative ideas that you can use them
• Automation is hot but do you know how to prioritize what you automate?
• The glory days of cloud are over and how do you 'save your pennies' and still move towards a solid FinOps model
• Constant state of attack that the cloud is under (How can you protect yourself going forward)

Episode Charity:

Proceeds from this episode will be going towards the children's mental health program at Corewell Health Foundation.

Episode Sponsor:

Aviatrix is a Secure Cloud Networking company based out of Santa Clara California.

In this special episode we celebrate the 4th annual holiday fundraiser podcast. It is already a blessing to raise money for great causes all while raising security awareness for small and medium sized businesses. The topic for this episode is one that is super relevant for this day and age of Digital Transformation. However, in keeping with the format of #RealTalk, we are going to explore some 'real world' use cases for using Artificial Intelligence in Security in 2024.

The have two special guests and one awesome co-host for this episode. Kassandra Murphy is a Senior Consulting Solutions Engineer for Splunk. My other guest is Sanjay Kalra who is in Product Management for ZScaler.

My co-host for this episode is none other than Jim Kuiphof, who happens to be the Deputy Chief Information Security Officer at Corewell Health!

Talking Points:

• Touched on phases of the kill chain/attack lifecycle and how AI comes into play, WHY it's expanding the attack surface within each phase (i.e., system enumeration can be done at such a larger speed and scale)
• How will AI change how companies will be adhering to the new Security and Exchange Commission's policy for reporting security breaches
• Researching AI from a defensive Point of View
• How do you keep up with the business's speed of moving forward with AI while trying to protect it

Episode Sponsors:

Splunk -  Splunk is a security observability solutions provider based out of San Francisco California.

Zscaler -  ZScaler is a security solution provider based out of San Jose California. 

Episode Charities:

North Kent Connect - North Kent Connect is a Christian organization committed to improving the lives of all people in northern Kent County by providing access to basic needs and promoting economic independence.

Toys for Tots West Michigan - The mission of the U. S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots Program is to collect new, unwrapped toys during October, November and December each year, and distribute those toys as Christmas gifts to less fortunate children in the community in which the campaign is conducted.

Reference Links:

If you are interested in the SURGe blog that Kassie talked about in the episode, you can find it Here.

Have you ever wondered what it takes to get into the information security field? Have you thought how hard could it be? What about all of the big money I hear people make in this space? Well in this episode I talk with Mattalynn Darden and Esther Muchai about how hard it really is to break in.

If you are wondering how these two talented young women know, here is a little background on what they are currently doing and why it is relevant to the this episode's topic.

Mattalynn is an Information Security Intern at Lear Corporation and Esther is pursuing your Master's Degree in Cybersecurity at Grand Valley State University. Both of them share some of the struggles that they are currently having and I give some advice on how to possibly overcome them.

So, if you are thinking of entering the crazy, foggy world that is Information Security, then this episode is for you!

Talking Points:

• What made you want to get into the cybersecurity field?
• What are some of the main challenges that you are facing right now?
• Did either of you go the 'paid' learning route (e.g. college or training classes)?
• What are some free training/tools you have found useful?

*Disclaimer* Thoughts and opinion in this episode are solely myself or my guests and not necessarily reflective of our employers.

In this episode I had a chance to sit down with Matt Nelson and do the podcast from a very cool location.  Matt is a Senior Security Architect for Guidepoint Security. The topic of our rant was centered around all of the things 'wrong' with cybersecurity sales and why it hurts everyone.

Talking Points Include:

• Ineffective Bad Behavior - You are doing you and your company a disservice 
• Improper In-person Event Etiquette
• Do Social Engineering for Good!
• What you as a Customer can do to help set expectations
• The importance of building relationships

Special shout outs to Maril Vernon, Michelle Beracy and Anthony Coggins!

In this episode I talk with Lloyd 'Lucky' Guyot and Alex O'Meera about The Center for Internet Security's Critical Security Controls. Lloyd is a Security Advisor for Optiv and President of the Grand Rapids ISSA Chapter. Alex is a Security Analyst for Stack Overflow and Secretary of the Grand Rapids ISSA Chapter.

Talking Points:

• How can the CIS 18 help an SMB build your security program?
• How can the CIS 18 help mature a security program?
• Which controls should a company start with?
• And many more!

Episode Sponsor:

Grand Rapids ISSA Chapter (with special thanks to Optiv). The GR-ISSA is the local chapter of the Information Systems Security Association.

Episode Charity:

The charity for the month of November is the Corewell Health Foundation. More specifically, the money will be going to assist children with various mental health challenges.

In this episode I had a chance to speak with Chris Jordan and Al Wissigner about where a small and medium sized business (SMB) should start their security journey. This is especially important in this day and age of the ever expanding cloud infrastructure and Software as a Service (SaaS) models.  Both of these fine gentlemen work for Fluency and have a TON of experience working SMBs.

Talking Points:

• The idea of bridging the gap between what they want to do and what they can afford to do?
• Why is it so important for an SMB to understand how to properly do cross-platform?
• Security companies are generally not targeting SMBs
• Why is BEC one of the most important things to do understand?
• How can a SMB use automation to help offset the lack of a large security team?

Episode Charity:

October's selected charity is called the Both Hands. Both Hands is an organization that helps local widows with chores/projects that are hard to do on their own, all while raising money for a family to adopt a child.

Episode Sponsor:

This episode was sponsored by Fluency. Fluency is a modern security operations platform that can handle today's agile environments. They are based out of Rockville, Maryland.

Despite the recent push by some old school (re: outdated) leaders to force employees to return the office, remote work is here to stay. While we all talk about the importance of making remote work secure, there isn't much talk about how the experience for the end-users. Fortunately, there are some companies out there that are understanding the need to balance security, business and end user needs.

In this episode I talk with Melinda Ann O'Neill about Digital Employee Experience (DEX). Melinda Ann is a Director of Strategic Accounts for Tanium. We covered several key areas of both business success and information security success.

Talking Points:

• Why is ensuring a remote employees' experience is critical to a company's success?
• What are some of the main challenges businesses are having when it comes to DEX?
• What are some ways that a multi-faceted solution can balance both security and business concerns?

Episode Charity:

October's selected charity is called the Both Hands. Both Hands is an organization that helps local widows with chores/projects that are hard to do on their own, all while raising money for a family to adopt a child.

Episode Sponsor:

This episode was sponsored by Tanium. Tanium is a End Point Solutions company based out of the West Coast state of Washington.

In this episode I head out to The Unicorn Tavern in Grand Haven, Michigan to talk Network Segmentation with Steve Barnes and Tyler Adams. Steve is an Enterprise Security Architect for Fortinet and Tyler is a Information Security Analyst for Corewell Health.

Talking Points:

• How has Network Segmentation changed in 2023?
• Who is responsible? Is that team being supported enough?
• How are you compartmentalizing things?
• Should you separate your IT and your OT?
• Does network segmentation make it easier to start a deception campaign?
• How can you get business buy it to make this happen?

Episode Sponsor:

This episode is sponsored by Fortinet. Fortinet is a Network Security Solutions company based out of Sunnyvale California.

Episode Charity:

Part of the sponsorship fees from this episode will be going to the Alex's Saints charity. Alex's Saints Foundation works to provide life-changing emotional and financial assistance to young adults who struggle with substance use disorder, while empowering long-term recovery.

Editor's Note:

A quick note about the charity comment in the episode. I mistakenly confused the topic of the charity we are working this month to one I am looking into. Alex's Saints is not a suicide prevention organization.  My sincerest apologies for the confusion.