The Cyber Ranch Podcast

Our guest this week is Jonathan Rau, VP and Distinguished Engineer over at Query, and a proponent of what he calls "SecDataOps".  Jonathan is quite active on LinkedIn and his takes, though often spicy, tend to be spot-on.  Allan has come to enjoy following Jonathan's posts, and he was excited to have Jonathan come on the show and share his insights.

Allan asks Jonathan, in a VERY lively conversation:

1. What is SecDataOps?
2. What is...

Geoff Hancock is Deputy CEO and CISO for Access Point Consulting, Former Global Director and CISO over at World Wide Technology.  He’s also a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor at George Washington University and has held various C-suite and executive roles at Verizon, CGI Federal Advanced Technology, Microsoft, and Advanced Cybersecurity Group.  He is back at the 'Ranch this week to talk about CISO Communications.

Allan asks Geof...

Join Allan LIVE! at Zero Trust World in Orlando as he asks 12 guests "What does Zero Trust Mean to You?" and a wide variety of other questions.

Conference highlights are discussed as well, including hacker activities, hacker demonstrations, incredible talks, etc.

Allan also learns all about The Tech Degenerates, and organization furthering partnership and comradery amongst cybersecurity vendors, MSPs, MSSPs, CISOs, etc. (Allan has ...

How does cybersecurity relate to the four horsemen of the apocalypse?  Famine, Pestilence, War, and Death?  In this episode, Dr. Chase Cunningham, renowned Zero Trust expert, author, instructor, Chief Strategy Officer, advisor, etc., examines the 4 conditions on our planet represented by the four horsemen, ties it all to cybersecurity, and then solves it all with Zero Trust.  It's quite a ride and an adventure you should listen to!

Howdy, y'all!  Allan went down to Orlando, Florida and recorded three LIVE! shows at Zero Trust World, a conference sponsored by ThreatLocker.  This is the first of those three shows.

James Keeler of LMT Technology Solutions has a steady hand on the incident response wheel and a lot of experience under his belt as well.  After seeing James speak on a panel at Zero Trust World, Allan asked him to be on the show.

Join Allan as he...

This week Allan is joined by Leigh Honeywell (CEO of Tall Poppy) Nathan Case (Federal CISO at Snyk), and Ryan Macababbad (Currently looking.  HIRE HER!), three cybersecurity professionals with broad backgrounds in cyber, and all three of whom are neurodivergent.

Allan in fact, has been recently diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, albeit 'high functioning' (as the diagnosis indicates) or 'low support needed' (as the autism ...

Fun fact:  There are more vulnerabilities and exploits below the OS layer than above it!

CPUs, BIOS, Firmware, embedded Linux, FPGAs, UEFI, PXE...  The list goes on an on.  What are we supposed to do about that?

Allan asked Yuriy to come down to the 'Ranch to discuss this issue with him.  Yuriy is CEO at Eclypsium, member of the Forbes Technology Counsel, Founder of the open source CHIPSEC project, former head of Threat Research at...

In this episode, Allan flies solo, as he is finally willing to speak on an issue he has been mulling and fussing over for some time:  the two-fold CISO laments of:

• "We have all the accountability and none of the authority!"
• "We don't own the risk - we advise the business"

Allan is refuting both of these claims.

Allan calls up examples such as project managers, contract lawyers, CFOs in his argument.

He also demonstrates t...

We declared a while back that 'not having a seat at the table' was a tired CISO topic.  So we decided to solution the complaint.

Hopefully we pulled it off.

Join Allan and Jim McConnell, Principal at Ask McConnell, LLC and former Fellow in Corporate Security Protection Operations at Verizon, as they take on the challenge of solving this common lament.

There is a fierce round of "answer pong" as they throw out suggestions on how to ...

Pat Benoit, CISO at Brinks, returns to the 'Ranch to visit Allan and to chat about his newest achievement - Pat got a NACD Directorship Certification!

Allan has often thought about doing this as well, so he got Pat on the mic to talk about his whole experience:

1. Why did you do it?
2. How hard was it?
3. What was involved?
4. What do you hope to get out of it?
5. Did you farm around for alternatives?
6. Is there more you plan to do?

As top...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest is Ayman Elsawah, who, like Allan these days, is a fractional CISO and founder of his own security company.  He has done the fractional CISO thing many times.  He has also been a professor, a security consultant, and a cloud-specific security consultant.  His tenure includes eBay, NCC Group, Justworks and Masterclass.  Ayman and Allan are talking about how cybersecuri...

This one was recorded LIVE! in Podcast Alley at the CyberMarketingCon 2023 put on by the Cybersecurity Marketing Society in Austin, Texas.

Marketing!?!!?  Say what!?!?

Yup!  Allan went down to Austin to catch up with industry players and to participate in the conference as a "creator", i.e., podcaster.

While there Allan ran into his friend Tom LeDuc, CMO at Semperis, and he got Tom to hop on the mic with him to discuss leader...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast! Our guest this week is John Checco, aka "Checco", who is overdue for being on the show we freely admit!  John is a presence on LinkedIn and in our industry.  He’s the author of “Zero Trust: From Aspirational to Overdue”.  He’s also involved, as you can imagine, in many other things – various advisory roles, ISSA roles, Infraguard roles…  He’s been resident CISO at Proofpoint, fo...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest is Luke Jennings, VP of Research & Development at Push Security, former Chief Researcher at Countercept, Principle Security Consultant at MWR…  He’s been around the industry.  Luke is passionate about tracking the evolution of attacks – how are the bad guys morphing and changing their game in response to our new defenses, and more importantly, new technologies tha...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest is Adam Bateman, CEO and Co-Founder at Push Security, based in the UK.  Another of our cyber friends from across the pond!  Is a former director at the security consultancy MWR who were renowned in the industry for their specialist research and red team capability. Adam started off as a red teamer himself, and then went on to build and lead the detection and response ...

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest is Geoff Hancock, Deputy CEO and CISO for Access Point Consulting, Former Global Director and CISO over at World Wide Technology.  He’s also a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor at George Washington University and has held various C-suite and executive roles at Verizon, CGI Federal Advanced Technology, Microsoft, and Advanced Cybersecurity Group.  Yup!  Another well-...

In this SPECIAL EDITION! Allan interviews the 3 CISOs who created the CISO XC series of conferences:

• Cecil Pineda
• Jaimin Shah
• Randy Potts

CISO XC is the only conference for CISOs (and their reports) that is put on my a team of 3 CISOs and an awesome all-CISO advisory board.

And the amount of money CISO XC gives to charity is MIND BOGGLING.  Hint:  This years's goal is greater than some CISO's salaries!!!

In this brief SPE...