Bonus episode: Cybersecurity Sessions host Cyril Noel-Tagoe was recently featured on the Mimecast podcast series Phishy Business. Cyril joined hosts Alice Jeffery and Brian Pinnock, plus fellow guest, Mimecast Senior Product Manager Dr Kiri Addison, for a fascinating conversation about bots and what they are used for (both good and bad). About Phishy Business

Cyber-criminals are relentless, and the number of attacks is growing. Businesses are increasingly turning to ethical hackers to find bugs and exploits before attackers do, offering financial incentives for their efforts. As a security researcher, our host Cyril Noel-Tagoe is always on the hunt for new vulnerabilities. He’s joined for this episode by ethical hacking enthusiast and Daily Swig reporter Jessica Haworth, who has a finger firmly on the pulse of the latest bug bounty programs and developments.

Mentoring is essential to closing the cybersecurity skills gap, especially in realizing the potential of people from underrepresented communities. In recent years many newcomers to cyber have been mentored by Gabrielle Botbol. Since teaching herself how to be a pentester, she has become recognized as one of Canada’s top 20 women in cybersecurity. Andy Still finds out how Gabrielle entered the world of cybersecurity after leaving another vocation, and how she is helping the next generation of women and underrepresented communities follow her ‘six steps to becoming a pentester’.

Many businesses argue that they need to collect information about customers to verify who they are and secure their accounts. However, this is at odds with online privacy advocates, who say organizations are compromising our security by collecting far too much information about us. In this episode, Netacea co-founder Andy Still talks to @ZDNet cybersecurity journalist Charlie Osborne about the intrinsic link between security and privacy, how legislation like the GDPR has strengthened both, and where responsibility lies for protecting our privacy online.

We’re told that multi-factor authentication is more secure than passwords, but in truth most MFA is susceptible to the same old threats, such as phishing and man-in-the-middle attacks. In fact, the widely championed advice to “use MFA, any MFA” could lead to a false sense of security and even more data breaches. In this episode, Andy sits down with Roger Grimes (Data-Driven Defense Evangelist, KnowBe4) to find out why MFA is vulnerable to exploitation, whether some MFAs are better than others, and what the future of secure authentication might look like.

It’s likely that we encounter artificial intelligence more often than we realize. Just as AI can be used to facilitate fraud and spread misinformation via deepfakes and sophisticated identity theft, it can also be used to develop algorithms that detect cyber-attacks in the blink of an eye. In this episode of the Cybersecurity Sessions, Andy is joined by Elaine Lee (Data Scientist, Mimecast) to delve into the benefits and risks of AI in cybersecurity, examining how artificial intelligence can be used both as an offensive weapon by adversaries and by security teams to defend against attacks.

How can you really know what havoc hackers could wreak on your systems? By challenging them to do it and fixing the exploits they discover, of course. In this episode of the Cybersecurity Sessions, Andy finds out what it’s like to be on a ‘red team’ tasked with hacking into an employer’s own systems by any means necessary, with lauded offensive security practitioner Jonathan Echavarria (ReliaQuest).

In this month’s episode, we’re talking about ad fraud and the role bots play in this lucrative space. Marketers care intensely about engagement and pay advertisers good money to get it, but how do they know they aren’t paying for visits from malicious bots? And what other kinds of harm do ad fraud bots cause businesses as a result? To find out, Andy invites Beacon’s Stewart Boutcher onto the Cybersecurity Sessions. As two CTOs focused on tackling bots, but from different perspectives, Andy and Stewart find plenty to discuss!

With drones now capable of massive cluster displays at events like the Olympics opening ceremony, and being used in sectors like healthcare, what role does cybersecurity play in making these devices safe?

Click fraud is gaining prominence as a threat to marketing budgets, however many businesses are less aware of the financial impact of skewed analytics caused by such activity. If bots and real customers look just the same, what does that mean for analytics? Are marketers making good decisions, or are they basing their marketing strategies on flawed data?