Cybr Podcast

Shane Sims is back on the show with a gripping story. Seriously, if Netflix decided to make a movie or mini-series about this, I wouldn’t even be surprised…except this really happened and you’re about to get a front-row seat to how it unfolded. Shane wore a wire and infiltrated a cybercrime group back in 2005 that was stealing intellectual property from organizations, including defense contractors. Normally when you think of cybercrime groups, you don’t think in-person meetings or “wearing wires” to catch them in the act. But this group primarily exploited wireless networks to exfiltrate IP and sensitive data, and then turned around to extort the organization. Catching them in the act required Shane to go undercover. They met in hotel rooms with SWAT teams on stand-by, they met in vans to carry out attacks, and they finally gathered enough evidence to arrest and charge the suspects. Hear about all of that from start to finish in this epic episode.

This is our most intense episode to date, and it's a fascinating one. Peer into the world of the FBI and its response to cybercrime all the way back to the 1990s. Shane was a Supervisory Special Agent responsible for building a cyber offense unit and capabilities & led all cyber offensive operations in support of counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and cybercrime matters. Later, he transferred to the FBI's Critical Incident Response Group to help develop and lead a crisis response organization charged with countering WMD threats on US soil working closely with the Department of Defense's Joint Special Operations Command, White House, and other government agencies. After the FBI, Shane worked at PwC and KPMG for a number of years, and he is now the CEO of Kivu, a full-service cybersecurity consulting firm that offers services in three core divisions: advisory services, managed services, and response services.

In this episode, Kostas and I discuss how to get started with AWS security, what beginners and practitioners should focus on, and what’s currently hot and in-demand job wise. Kostas is the co-author of our course on Cybr: Introduction to AWS Security.

In this episode, Cybr community member Eric Gimbel walks us through step-by-step how he landed a Junior Penetration Tester job without having prior cybersecurity or IT experience. If you’ve ever been told “you need help desk experience first” or “you need 5+ years in IT before you can apply” then you need to listen to this episode, because our guest did neither of those to land his Pentester job, and he gives you a step-by-step framework so you can do it too.

In this episode, we talk about DevOps, what containers are and when they’re helpful, and Kubernetes. We also discuss security concerns to be aware of when using these technologies. Our guest, Chad Crowell, has extensive experience as a DevOps engineer and working with cloud environments. He’s a Microsoft Certified Trainer and author, and currently a Director of IT for an IT services provider.

Heard of Terraform and Infrastructure as Code, but not too sure what it is or how to get started? In this episode, Derek Morgan explains why IaC is important, how tools like Terraform can be used, and we talk about an infrastructure delivery platform called Spacelift.

Dan Frye joins us to talk about becoming a CISO, and then leaving that position to start his own cybersecurity startup company. His startup (Rocketansky) aimed to replace passwords and 2FA with passwordless authentication. We chat about his experience founding that business, the challenges he went through during the 2 years of running it, and why he decided it was time to shut it down.

Daniel Miessler joins us to talk about how security assessments often get confused and misused. We talk about vulnerability assessments versus bug bounties versus pentests versus red team engagements. Oh and what’s purple team really supposed to be anyway? We wrap up by talking career advice for those interested in a role related to security assessments.

Roberto Rodriguez (@Cyb3rWard0g) talks to us about what it’s like to be a Threat Researcher at the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center. We talk about how he got started, what a day in his life looks like, what the differences are between threat research, threat hunting, pentesting, etc...and we talk about resources that he’s created and that could help you out, including his online and interactive book called the Threat Hunter Playbook.

Nicole Hoffman (@threathuntergrl) talks to us about what it’s like to be in threat intelligence and how she became an intel analyst. What I love about her story is that it’s *not* a straightforward path. Her path to cybersecurity is a winding road with lots of twists and turns. I hope that by hearing Nicole’s story, it can help you break through and land your first role or your dream role since she provides actionable advice. Definitely worth a listen if you have any interest in threat intel and threat hunting!