Exploring Information Security - Exploring Information Security

• How to Close the Cybersecurity Skills Gap with a Student Powered SOC

  Summary: Timothy De Block speaks with Bruce Johnson of TekStream about a truly innovative solution to the cybersecurity skills shortage: the Student-Powered Security Operations Center (SOC). Bruce outlines how this three-way public-private partnership not only provides 24-hour threat detection and remediation serves as a robust workforce development program for university students. The conversation dives into the program's unique structure, its 100% placement rate for students, the challenges of AI "hallucinations", and how the program teaches crucial life skills like accountability and critical thinking. The Student-Powered SOC Model Workforce Development: The program tackles the cybersecurity skills shortage by providing students with practical, real-world experience and helps bridge the gap where new graduates struggle to find jobs due to minimum experience requirements. Funding Structure: The program is built on a three-way private-public partnership involving the state, educational institutions, and Techstream. The funding for the SOC platform is often separate from the academic funding for student talent building. "Investment Solution": The model is positioned as an investment rather than an outsourced expense. Institutions own the licenses for their SIM environments and retain built assets, fostering collaborative value building. Reputational Value: The program provides significant reputational value to schools, boasting a 100% placement rate for students and differentiating them from institutions that only offer academic backgrounds. Cost Savings: It serves as a cost-saving measure for CISOs, as students are paid an hourly rate to perform security analyst work. Student Training and Impact Onboarding and Assessment: The formal onboarding process, which includes training on tools, runbooks, and hands-on labs, has been shortened to six weeks. The biggest indicator of a student's success is their critical thinking test, which assesses logical reasoning rather than rote knowledge. Progression and Mentorship: Students are incrementally matured by starting with low-complexity threats (like IP reputation) and gradually advancing to higher-difficulty topics, including TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures), utilizing a complexity scoring system. Integrated career counseling meets regularly with students to review their metrics and guide their career planning. Metrics and Productivity: The program has proven successful, with students handling 50% of incident volume within a quarter of onboarding, including medium to high complexity threats. Beyond Cybersecurity: Students gain valuable, transferable life skills, such as collaboration, accountability, professionalism, and "adulting", which helps isolated students become more engaged. AI and the "Expert in the Loop" Techstream’s Overkill AI: Techstream uses its product, Overkill, for 24-hour threat detection and remediation, automating analysis, prioritization, and the creation of new detections to go "from zero to hero in 24 hours". Expert Supervision: Their approach is "expert in the loop" , meaning humans (students and analysts) are involved in supervising the AI, with automation being adopted incrementally as trust is built. The Hallucination Challenge: Timothy De Block raised concern about students lacking the experience to discern incorrect information or "hallucinations" from AI output. Bruce Johnson affirmed that the program trains students in three areas: using AI, supervising AI, and understanding AI broadly. Training Necessity: Students must learn how to do the traditional level one work before they can effectively supervise an AI, as experience is needed to detect when the AI makes a bad assumption.

  --------  

  30:44

  --------

  30:44
• What is the 2025 State of the API Report From Postman?

  Summary: Timothy De Block is joined by Sam Chehab to unpack the key findings of the 2025 Postman State of the API Report. Sam emphasizes that APIs are the connective tissue of the modern world and that the biggest security challenges are rooted in fundamentals. The conversation dives deep into how AI agents are transforming API development and consumption, introducing new threats like "rug pulls" , and demanding higher quality documentation and error messages. Sam also shares actionable advice for engineers, including a "cheat code" for getting organizational buy-in for AI tools and a detailed breakdown of the new Model Context Protocol (MCP). Key Insights from the State of the API Report API Fundamentals are Still the Problem: The start of every security journey is an inventory problem (the first two CIS controls). Security success is a byproduct of solving collaboration problems for developers first. The Collaboration Crisis: 93% of teams are struggling with API collaboration, leading to duplicated work and an ever-widening attack surface due to decentralized documentation (Slack, Confluence, etc.). API Documentation is Up: A positive sign of progress is that 58% of teams surveyed are actively documenting their APIs to improve collaboration. Unauthorized Access Risk: 51% of developers cite unauthorized agent access as a top security risk. Sam suspects this is predominantly due to the industry-wide "hot mess" of secrets management and leaked API keys. Credential Amplification: This term is used to describe how risk is exponential, not linear, when one credential gains access to a service that, in turn, has access to multiple other services (i.e., lateral movement). AI, MCP, and New Security Challenges Model Context Protocol (MCP): MCP is a protocol layer that sits on top of existing RESTful services, allowing users to generically interact with APIs using natural language. It acts as an abstraction layer, translating natural language requests into the proper API calls. The AI API Readiness Checklist: For APIs to be effective for AI agents: Rich Documentation: AI thrives on documentation, which developers generally hate writing. Using AI to write documentation is key. Rich Errors: APIs need contextual error messages (e.g., "invalid parameter, expected X, received Y") instead of generic messages like "something broke". AI Introduces Supply Chain Threats: The "rug pull" threat involves blindly trusting an MCP server that is then swapped out for a malicious one. This is a classic supply chain problem (similar to NPM issues) that can happen much faster in the AI world. MCP Supply Chain Risk: Because you can use other people's MCP servers, developers must validate which MCP servers they're using to avoid running untrusted code. The first reported MCP hack involved a server that silently BCC'd an email to the attacker every time an action was performed. Actionable Advice and Engineer "Cheat Codes" Security Shift-Left with Postman: Security teams should support engineering's use of tools like Postman because it allows developers to run security tests (load testing, denial of service simulation, black box testing) themselves within their normal workflow, accelerating development velocity. API Key Management is Critical: Organizations need policies around API key generation, expiration, and revocation. Postman actively scans public repos (like GitHub) for leaked Postman keys, auto-revokes them, and notifies the administrator. Getting AI Buy-in (The Cheat Code): To get an AI tool (like a Postman agent or a code generator) approved within your organization, use this tactic: Generate a DPA (Data Processing Agreement) using an AI tool. Present the DPA and a request for an Enterprise License to Legal, Security, and your manager. This demonstrates due diligence and opens the door for safe, approved AI use, making you an engineering "hero". About Postman and the Report Postman's Reach: Postman is considered the de facto standard for API development and is used in 98% of the Fortune 500. Report Origins: The annual report, now in its seventh year, was started because no one else was effectively collecting and synthesizing data across executives, managers, developers, and consultants regarding API production and consumption.

  --------  

  47:15

  --------

  47:15
• How AI Will Transform Society and Affect the Cybersecurity Field

  Summary: Timothy De Block sits down with Ed Gaudet, CEO of Censinet and a fellow podcaster, for a wide-ranging conversation on the rapid, transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Ed Gaudet characterizes AI as a fast-moving "hammer" that will drastically increase productivity and reshape the job market, potentially eliminating junior software development roles. The discussion also covers the societal risks of AI, the dangerous draw of "digital cocaine" (social media), and Censinet's essential role in managing complex cyber and supply chain risks for healthcare organizations. Key Takeaways AI's Transformative & Disruptive Force A Rapid Wave: Ed Gaudet describes the adoption of AI, particularly chat functionalities, as a rapid, transformative wave, surpassing the speed of the internet and cloud adoption due to its instant accessibility. Productivity Gains: AI promises immense productivity, with the potential for tasks requiring 100 people and a year to be completed by just three people in a month. The Job Market Shift: AI is expected to eliminate junior software development roles by abstracting complexity. This raises concerns about a future developer shortage as senior architects retire without an adequate pipeline of talent. Adaptation, Not Doom: While acknowledging significant risks, Ed Gaudet maintains that humanity will adapt to AI as a tool—a "hammer"—that will enhance cognitive capacity and productivity, rather than making people "dumber". The Double-Edged Sword: Concerns exist over the nefarious uses of AI, such as deepfakes being used for fraudulent job applications, underscoring the ongoing struggle between good and evil in technology. Cyber Risk in Healthcare and Patient Safety Cyber Safety is Patient Safety: Due to technology's deep integration into healthcare processes, cyber safety is now directly linked to patient safety. Real-World Consequences: Examples of cyber attacks resulting in canceled procedures and diverted ambulances illustrate the tangible threat to human life. Censinet's Role: Censinet helps healthcare systems manage third-party, enterprise cyber, and supply chain risks at scale, focusing on proactively addressing future threats rather than past ones. Patient Advocacy: AI concierge services have the potential to boost patient engagement, enabling individuals to become stronger advocates for their own health through accessible second opinions. Technology's Impact on Mental Health & Life "Digital Cocaine": Ed Gaudet likened excessive phone and social media use, particularly among younger generations, to "digital cocaine"—offering short-term highs but lacking nutritional value and promoting technological dependence. Life-Changing Tools: Ed Gaudet shared a powerful personal story of overcoming alcoholism with the help of the Reframe app, emphasizing that the right technology, used responsibly, can have a profound, life-changing impact on solving mental health issues. Resources & Links Mentioned Censinet: Ed Gaudet's company, specializing in third-party and enterprise risk management for healthcare. Reframe App: An application Ed Gaudet used for his personal journey of recovery from alcoholism, highlighting the power of technology for mental health.

  --------  

  47:55

  --------

  47:55
• [RERELEASE] How Macs get Malware

  Wes (@kai5263499) spoke about this topic at BSides Hunstville this year. I was fascinated by it and decided to invite Wes on. Mac malware is a bit of an interest for Wes. He's done a lot of research on it. His talk walks through the history of malware on Macs. For Apple fan boys, Macs are still one of the more safer options in the personal computer market. That is changing though. Macs because of their increased market share are getting targeted more and more. We discuss some pretty nifty tools that will help with fending off that nasty malware. Little Snitch is one of those tools. Some malware actively avoids the application. Tune in for some more useful information.

  --------  

  26:16

  --------

  26:16
• [RERELEASE] Why communication in infosec is important - Part 2

  Claire (@ClaireTills) doesn’t have your typical roll in infosec. She sits between the security teams and marketing team. It’s a fascinating roll and something that gives her a lot of insight into multiple parts of the business. What works and what doesn’t work in communicating security to the different areas. Check her blog out.In this episode we discuss:How important is it for the company to take security seriouslyHow would someone get started improving communication?Why we have a communication problem in infosecWhere should people startMore resources:Networking with Humans to Create a Culture of Security by Tracy Maleeff - BSides NoVa 2017Courtney K BsidesLV 2018, Implementing the Three Cs of Courtesy, Clarity, and Comprehension to Optimize End User Engagement (video not available yet)BSidesWLG 2017 - Katie Ledoux - Communication: An underrated tool in the infosec revolutionJeff Man, The Art of the Jedi Mind TrickThe Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple WordsChris Roberts, Communication Across Ranges

  --------  

  26:37

  --------

  26:37

Flere Teknologi podcasts

Trendige Teknologi podcasts

Om Exploring Information Security - Exploring Information Security