Demystifying Cybersecurity Myths
By Jennifer Lyn Walker
Welcome to the inaugural episode of The Cybersecurity Evangelist – a cybersecurity podcast for everyone. On the last Gate 15 Risk Roundtable (Ep 9), I eluded to following up on the topic of ransomware for this episode. But after some deliberation, I thought a better place to start a new podcast on cybersecurity and how it is relevant to everyone, was to kind of level set or myth-bust some commonly held beliefs about cybersecurity. So, we’ll get back to ransomware in future episodes, but for this episode I wanted phish for answers by demystifying some myths about cybersecurity. And my guest who helped me do that is Travis Farral.
Who is Travis Farral? Travis has been a part of the security community for many years. He got his start WAY back in the modem and bulletin board days. Throughout his career, Travis has worked in incident response, threat intelligence, and industrial control systems security, among other facets. Travis has helped secure companies like Nokia and ExxonMobil. He is currently CISO at Critical Start, working on the managed detection and response side of the business.
A little about The Cybersecurity Evangelist (TCE, for short)…On TCE we talk about cybersecurity so everyone can understand. That’s not to say we won’t have technical-ish conversations, but for the most part, our goal is to talk cyber from (and with) a human perspective. Given that phishing is consistently the leading technique of successful cyber attacks, it confirms the words from the World’s Most Famous Hacker, Kevin Mitnick – also turned cybersecurity evangelist, by the way – it’s easier to get a person to reveal something than it is to “hack” a computer. In other words, it takes far less effort to exploit a person through an email than it does to exploit a computer through a technical vulnerability.
Our hope is that TCE will have a little something for everyone. Indeed there are individual/residential listeners. But I think for the most part, our audience will be from businesses of various types, and not all of them will be cyber focused, especially when it comes to security awareness and education programs. Our goal with TCE is to provide information and education in small, manageable, relevant snippets to enhance cybersecurity awareness for everyone.
Have a listen on Anchor, Apple, Spotify.
Week-to-week, you can hear and learn more about our all-hazards threats, risks, mitigation and other issues impacting homeland security risk management from our team as well as our regular and special guests. The full podcast menu includes:
- The Risk Roundtable, is a recurring monthly discussion among our team and occasional guests as we explore the all-hazards threats and risks impacting the United States and internationally.
- The Cybersecurity Evangelist, with Jennifer Lyn Walker, is a cybersecurity-focused discussion with Jen and invited guests.
- Nerd Out! Security Panel Discussion, moderated by Dave Pounder, focuses on physical security topics including terrorism, extremism, hostile events, and other pertinent topics.
- The Gate 15 Interview, is a monthly interview between Gate 15’s founder and Managing Director, Andy Jabbour and guests from throughout the homeland security risk management community addressing a wide range of all-hazards topics and issues.
We hope you’ll subscribe, listen and share your ideas and other feedback! Reach out to us on Twitter, LinkedIn or via email at: podcast@gate15.global.
