
The State of Cybersecurity Hiring, 2026 content plans, and the weekly news - ESW #441
2026/1/12 | 1h 35 mins.
First Topic - Podcast Content Plans for 2026 Every year, I like to sit down and consider what the podcast should be focusing on. Not doing so ensures every single episode will be about AI and nobody wants that. Least of all, me. If I have one more all-AI episode, my head is going to explode. With that said, most of what we talk about in this segment is AI (picard face palm.png). I think 2026 will be THE defining year for GenAI. Three years after the release of ChatGPT, I think we've hit peak GenAI hype and folks are ready for it to put up or shut up. We'll see winners grow and get acquired and losers pivot to something else. More than anything, I want to interview folks who have actually seen it work at scale, rather than just in a cool demo in a vendor sandbox. Also on the agenda for this year: The battle against infostealers and session hijacking: we didn't have a good answer in 2025. When is it coming? Will it include Macs, despite them not having a traditional TPM? The state of trust in outsourcing and third party use (Cloud, MSSPs, SaaS, contractors): 2025 was not a good year for third parties. Lots of them got breached and caused their customers a lot of pain. Also, there's the state of balkanization between the US and... the rest of the entire world. Everyone outside the US seems to be trying to derisk their companies and systems from the Cloud Act right now. Vulnerability management market disruption: there are half a dozen startups already plotting to disrupt the market, likely to come out of stealth in 2026 Future of the SOC: if it's not AI, what is it? What else??? What am I missing? What would you like to see us discuss? Please drop me a line and let me know: [email protected] Topic 2: The state of cybersecurity hiring This topic has been in the works for a while! Ayman had a whole podcast and book focused on all the paths people take to get into security. Jackie worked with WiSys on outlining pathways into a cybersecurity career. Whether you're already in cyber or looking for a way in, this segment crams a lot of great advice into just 15-20 minutes. Segment resources: Ayman's personal guide for getting into security https://www.wicys.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/WiCyS-Pathways-in-Cyber-PDF-9.24.25.pdf News Finally, in the enterprise security news, Fundings and acquisitions still strong in 2026! Santa might be done delivering gifts, but not protecting Macs! ClickFix attacks Weaponized Raspberry Pis MongoDB incidents for Christmas Top 10 Cyber attacks of 2025 US gets tough on nation state hackers? Brute force attacks on Banks An AI Vending Machine All that and more, on this episode of Enterprise Security Weekly. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-441

Why are cybersecurity predictions so bad? - ESW #440
2026/1/05 | 1h 29 mins.
For our first episode of the new year, we thought it would be appropriate to dig into some cybersecurity predictions. First, we cover the very nature of predictions and why they're often so bad. To understand this, we get into logical fallacies and cognitive biases. In the next segment, we cover some 2025 predictions we found on the Internet. In the final segment, we discuss 2026, drop some of our own predictions, and talk about what we hope to see this year. SPOILER: Please fix session hijacking, okay tech industry? Segment resources: A great site for better understanding logical fallacies and cognitive biases Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-440

Holiday Chat: Local AI datacenter activism, AI can't substitute good taste, and more - ESW #439
2025/12/29 | 1h 13 mins.
For this week's episode of Enterprise Security Weekly, there wasn't a lot of time to prepare. I had to do 5 podcasts in about 8 days leading up to the holiday break, so I decided to just roll with a general chat and see how it went. Also, apologies, for any audio quality issues, as the meal I promised to make for dinner this day required a lot of prep, so I was in the kitchen for the whole episode! For reference, I made the recipe for morisqueta michoacana from Rick Martinez's cookbook, Mi Cocina. I used the wrong peppers (availability issue), so it came out green instead of red, but was VERY delicious. As for the episode, we discuss what we've been up to, with Jackie sharing her experiences fighting against Meta (allegedly, through some shell companies) building an AI datacenter in her town. We then get into discussing the limitations of AI, the potential of the AI bubble popping, and general limitations of AI that are becoming obvious. One of the key limitations is AI's inability to apply personal experience, have strong opinions, or any sense of 'taste'. I think I shared my observation that AI is becoming a sort of 'digital junk food'. "NO AI" has become a common phrase used by creators - a source of pride that media consumers seem to be celebrating and seeking out. Segment Resources: Kagi absolutely did NOT sponsor this episode. I have become a big fan of paying for search so that I am not the product. There are other players in this market, but I've settled on Kagi. We mention Ira Glass's bit on taste, which is a small bit of a longer talk he did on storytelling. The shorter bit is here, and is less than 2 minutes long. The full talk is split into 4 parts and posted on a YouTube channel called "War Photography" for some reason. Part 1: https://youtu.be/5pFI9UuC_fc Part 2: https://youtu.be/dx2cI-2FJRs Part 3: https://youtu.be/X2wLP0izeJE Part 4: https://youtu.be/sp8pwkgR8 Finally, we also bring up a talk we also discussed on episode 437, Benedict Evans' AI Eats the World Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-439

Internal threats are the hole in Cybersecurity's donut - Frank Vukovits - ESW #438
2025/12/22 | 1h 57 mins.
Interview with Frank Vukovits: Focusing inward: there lie threats also External threats get discussed more than internal threats. There's a bit of a streetlight effect here: external threats are more visible, easier to track, and sharing external threat intelligence doesn't infringe on any individual organization's privacy. That's why we hear the industry discuss external threats more, though internally-triggered incidents far outnumber external ones. Internal threats, on the other hand, can get personal. Accidental leaks are embarassing. Malicious insiders are a sensitive topic that internal counsel would erase from company memory if they could. Even when disclosure is required, the lawyers are going to minimize the amount of detail that gets out. I was chief incident handler for 5 years of my enterprise career, and never once had to deal with an external threat. I managed dozens of internal cases over those 5 years though. In this interview, we discuss the need for strong internal controls with Frank Vukovits from Delinea. As systems and users inside and outside organizations become increasingly connected, maintaining strong security controls is essential to protect data and systems from both internal and external threats. In this episode, we will explore the importance of strong internal controls around business application security and how they can best be integrated into a broader security program to ensure true enterprise security. This segment is sponsored by Delinea. Visit https://securityweekly.com/delinea to learn more about them! Topic Segment: Personal Disaster Recovery Many of us depend on service providers for our personal email, file storage, and photo storage. The line between personal accounts and work accounts often blur, particularly when it comes to Apple devices. We're way more dependent on our Microsoft, Apple, Meta, and Google accounts than we used to be. They're necessary to use home voice assistants, to log into other SaaS applications (Log in with Google/Apple/FB), and even manage our wireless plans (e.g. Google Fi). Getting locked out of any of these accounts can bring someone's personal and/or work life to a halt, and there are many cases of this happening. I'm not sure if we make it past sharing stories about what can and has happened. Getting into solutions might have to be a separate discussion (also, we may not have any solutions…) Friend of the show and sometimes emergency co-host Guillaume posted about this recently A romance author got locked out of her books A 79 year old got locked out of her iPad with all her family photos. Sadly, this is one of the most common scenarios. Someone either forgets their pin and locks out the device permanently, or a family member dies and didn't tell anyone their passwords or pins, so the surviving family can't access data, pay the bills, etc. Google example: Claims of CSAM material after father documents toddler at doctor's request https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/22/google-csam-account-blocked Dec 2025 Apple example: she tried to redeem a gift card that had been tampered with: https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/ Google example: developer lost all his work, because he was working on preventing revenge porn and other sensitive cases, and was building a better model to detect NSFW images: https://medium.com/@russoatlarge_93541/i-built-a-privacy-app-google-banned-me-over-a-dataset-used-in-ai-research-66bc0dfb2310 My partner's mom's Instagram account got hacked. Meta locked out all of it (Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook) and she couldn't get it reinstated. They wouldn't even let her open a NEW account. Weekly Enterprise News Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-438

Illuminating Data Blind Spots, Topic, Enterprise News - Tony Kelly - ESW #437
2025/12/15 | 1h 49 mins.
Interview Segment: Tony Kelly Illuminating Data Blind Spots As data sprawls across clouds and collaboration tools, shadow data and fragmented controls have become some of the biggest blind spots in enterprise security. In this segment, we'll unpack how Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) helps organizations regain visibility and control over their most sensitive assets. Our guest will break down how DSPM differs from adjacent technologies like DLP, CSPM, and DSP, and how it integrates into broader Zero Trust and cloud security strategies. We'll also explore how compliance and regulatory pressures are shaping the next evolution of the DSPM market—and what security leaders should be doing now to prepare. Segment Resources: https://static.fortra.com/corporate/pdfs/brochure/fta-corp-fortra-dspm-br.pdf This segment is sponsored by Fortra. Visit https://securityweekly.com/fortra to learn more about them! Topic Segment: We've got passkeys, now what? Over this year on this podcast, we've talked a lot about infostealers. Passkeys are a clear solution to implementing phishing and theft-resistant authentication, but what about all these infostealers stealing OAuth keys and refresh tokens? As long as session hijacking is as simple as moving a cookie from one machine to another, securing authentication seems like solving only half the problem. Locking the front door, but leaving a side door unlocked. After doing some research, it appears that there has been some work on this front, including a few standards that have been introduced: DBSC (Device Bound Session Credentials) for browsers DPoP (Demonstrating Proof of Possession) for OAuth applications We'll address a few key questions in this segment: 1. how do these new standards help stop token theft? 2. how broadly have they been adopted? Segment Resources: FIDO Alliance White Paper: DBSC/DPOP as Complementary Technologies to FIDO Authentication News Segment Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-437



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