KBKAST

Unlike every other security podcast, we don’t get stuck down in the technical weeds. Our remit is to speak with experts around the globe at the strategic level – how security technology can improve the experience and risk optimisation for every organisation. The Voice of Cyber® - In Partnership with Vanta

  1. 1d ago

    Episode 390 Deep Dive: Michael Pastor | Nobody Will Blame the AI - Liability, Reasonable Care and Your Vendor Contracts

    KB sits down with Michael Pastor, Dean for Technology Law Programs at New York Law School and former General Counsel of New York City Cyber Command, to talk about who is accountable when AI gets it wrong. They start with Mythos-class tools and what they mean for the legal standard of reasonable security. Michael argues the test is effectiveness and what your people can validate, not cost, and that "I trusted the technology" won't survive discovery. From there they get into whether AI could help settle disputes between counterparties, how courts might handle highly technical cyber cases, and why Michael wants to retire the phrase "human in the loop" in favour of real oversight by people with context. They finish on contracts - what general counsel should demand from AI vendors now, why renewals are about to get harder, and why Michael is still optimistic about where it all lands. About Michael: Michael Pastor is a Professor of Law from Practice. He serves as New York Law School's Dean for Technology Law Programs, the Director of the James Tricarico Jr. Institute for the Business of Law and In-House Counsel, and Co-Director of the Innovation Center for Law and Technology. He teaches the In-House Counsel Experience Seminar and Drafting Contracts: Technology Transactions. Professor Pastor previously served as the General Counsel of the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) and the New York City Cyber Command (NYC3). Keywords: reasonable security, standard of care, AI liability, general counsel, legal counsel, technology contracts, AI vendor contracts, vendor management, audit rights, breach notification, human in the loop, human oversight, NYDFS, cybersecurity regulation, vulnerability management, Mythos, AI validation, contract renewal, privacy by design, security by design, New York City Cyber Command, CISO, board, KBKast

  2. 6d ago

    Episode 389 Deep Dive: Omar Santos | Attackers Already Have It - What New Frontier Models Mean for Your Security Strategy

    In the first weeks of March, Omar Santos got early access to the model that became Anthropic’s Mythos. About an hour of testing was enough to convince him cybersecurity had changed for good. Omar, a Distinguished Engineer in AI Security Engineering at Cisco and co-chair of the Coalition for Secure AI, says his bigger worry is how fast everyone else is catching up. Open weight models are closing in on the frontier labs, so attackers no longer need access to Mythos to find and exploit vulnerabilities. KB and Omar get into why Cisco won’t send a finding to engineering without proof of an active exploit, how a public open source fix gives attackers a ready-made recipe, and why a library a student abandoned years ago could be running inside your patient records system. Omar wants defenders to go further than finding and fixing faster. That means refactoring code, adding compensating controls, and turning the risk register from an annual exercise into something that runs continuously. About Omar: Omar Santos is a Distinguished Engineer at Cisco, focused on AI security, cybersecurity research, incident response and vulnerability disclosure. He co-chairs the Coalition for Secure AI (CoSAI) and the FIRST PSIRT Special Interest Group, sits on the board of OASIS Open, and chairs the OpenEoX and CSAF technical committees, where his work led to CSAF becoming an ISO standard. He also led the DEF CON Red Team Village for several years. Omar has written more than 25 books, 21 video courses and over 50 research papers, and holds multiple patents. Before Cisco, he served in the United States Marines. Keywords: Mythos, Anthropic, Project Glasswing, frontier AI, open weight models, AI security, AI in cybersecurity, vulnerability management, zero days, exploit development, open source security, software supply chain, SBOM, OpenEoX, CSAF, CodeGuard, Coalition for Secure AI, CoSAI, Cisco, compensating controls, eBPF, secure by design, zero trust, incident response, threat hunting, continuous assessment, risk register, GRC, CISO, board, KBKast

  3. Oct 7

    Episode 388 Deep Dive: Dean Saunders | The Breach That Won't Look Like a Breach: Why AI Security Starts With Your Data

    Most boards approved AI for the productivity gains, and far fewer asked what it would expose. Dean Saunders says conversations with large organisations usually start with models and end up on data: where it lives, who can reach it, and how quickly an agent can move it once staff have gone home. KB and Dean talk about shadow AI, approved tools used on personal accounts, and trusted apps that quietly add AI features without security knowing. They also get into why compliance keeps getting mistaken for security, and why regulators now want proof of what you did rather than the policies you wrote. About Dean: Dean Saunders is the Regional Director for Australia and New Zealand at Forcepoint, where he supports customers and partners in protecting sensitive data across modern cloud, SaaS and AI‑enabled environments. He focuses on expanding Forcepoint’s data security footprint in the region, helping security leaders strengthen visibility and control over high‑risk data through the company’s portfolio. With more than two decades of leadership experience in enterprise software, cybersecurity, SaaS, channel strategy and go‑to‑market execution across Australia and the broader Asia Pacific, Dean has built a strong track record driving regional growth. His background includes leading high‑performing sales teams, developing partner ecosystems and supporting technology organisations competing in complex markets. Before joining Forcepoint, Dean held senior commercial and leadership positions at Cyara, Forticode, Unitrends/Kaseya, Teradici, CommVault and Total Defense. His diverse experience spans direct sales, channel and alliances, partner‑led growth and strategic market development, complemented by advisory work focused on improving sales execution and market strategy. He holds an MBA from the University of the Sunshine Coast and has completed extensive professional development in enterprise selling, leadership, key account management and media training. Keywords: AI data security, data security posture management, agentic AI, shadow AI, data loss prevention, DLP, data discovery and classification, AI governance, compliance vs security, insider risk, Forcepoint, cyber risk, board cyber governance, KBKast

  4. Sep 30

    Episode 387 Deep Dive: Dr Ahana Datta Fasel | China Doesn't Want What You Think It Wants

    Dr. Ahana Datta Fasel has spent years mapping 30 years of China’s cyber operations, and she opens by dismantling the story most of us have absorbed. China isn’t only hunting our secrets. Sometimes it wants to know what we know about them, sometimes it’s watching its own diaspora, and often the intent behind an operation is genuinely hard to read. She walks KB through why cyber has become inseparable from live conflict, from Ukraine’s power grids to the CCTVs of Tehran, and why the line between spying and preparing for war keeps moving. She explains the operation sitting inside America’s major telecom networks, where hackers have held access for three years and done nothing with it, and what that patience might mean. We also get into Five Eyes politics, the Huawei decisions, and why the West still doesn’t have a coherent China strategy. Ahana’s book, Full Stack Spies: Cyber Espionage in the Age of US-China Competition, is out in North America on 1 October. Grab it on Amazon (https://a.co/d/01aovOFW) or from Oxford University Press (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/full-stack-spies-9780197871386), where the code ADISTA5 takes 30 percent off. About Ahana: A former UK Government cyber leader and Financial Times cyber chief, Dr. Ahana Datta Fasel advises global governments and industry on geopolitical, AI and systemic risk strategies. She serves as non-executive director at a leading global digital rights charity, adviser to deep tech start-ups, and a strategic adviser on national security and resilience to the UK body for research, innovation and international partnerships. She has held fellowships at Cornell, Cambridge, Imperial and Durham, and her op-eds have appeared in the FT, Foreign Policy, Euractiv and the Columbia Journalism Review. Keywords: China cyber operations, cyber espionage, US-China competition, Full Stack Spies, geopolitics, Five Eyes, telecom breach, act of war, Taiwan, national security, hybrid warfare, Huawei

  5. Sep 16

    Episode 385 Deep Dive: Reece Corbett-Wilkins | From Crisis to Resilience - Protecting Our Way of Life

    Reece takes us behind the scenes of the Instructure incident, where his team fielded 65 instructions in 48 hours, and explains how a catastrophic cyber event actually gets run across insurers, government and thousands of schools at once. KB & Reece get into the hidden cost almost no one budgets for, business interruption, and what the JLR and Change Healthcare cases reveal about how dependent our economy has become on a handful of suppliers. He also makes the case that AI is quietly splitting security budgets in two, and why that worries him. For any leader thinking seriously about resilience, this one is worth your time. About Reece: Reece Corbett-Wilkins is the Head of First Response Australia, and is the Chief Strategy Officer at Atmos. For over 10 years, Reece has focused exclusively on cyber and privacy risk, having helped 1,000+ organisations through some of their most challenging times. Reece is particularly experienced in managing large scale multi-party data breaches, both locally and globally, and ransomware response. Reece works closely with the incident response industry, government, and law enforcement to achieve optimal outcomes for clients. Keywords: cyber resilience, incident response, business interruption, cyber insurance, critical infrastructure, SPHERE, ransomware, supply chain risk, SOCI reform, AI security budget, CAT event, small business cyber

  6. Sep 9

    Episode 384 Deep Dive: Sumedh Thakar | Mythos Turned 30 Days Into 24 Hours.

    When Mythos hit in April, the security world split between panic and hype. Sumedh Thakar, President and CEO of Qualys, joins KB to make the calmer case that Mythos accelerated an old threat rather than inventing one. They get into why zero-day vulnerabilities now need zero-day remediation, the misread that Mythos runs on your own code while your vendors use it too, the board conversation it reopened, tokenomics and budget pressure, and how much a CISO should really hand to the machines. About Sumedh: As a cybersecurity visionary, Sumedh is passionate about making the world’s digital journey safer. His education and early experiences as a coder led him to Qualys, where he rose from engineer to president and CEO. He joined Qualys in 2003, shortly after the company’s founding and in an era when organizations started using the cloud but didn’t know what to call it. His contributions and leadership helped propel Qualys to its current success in cybersecurity. Sumedh became president and CEO in 2021. In 2019, he was named president, and prior to that, he was chief product officer, driving the company’s vision of making enterprise security more efficient and disrupting the VM space with integrated capabilities like patch management and cybersecurity asset management. A “product fanatic and engineer at heart,” Sumedh was instrumental in dramatically expanding the original Qualys platform’s scope, integrations, and automations. He also scaled the company’s engineering talent internationally with a global 24×7 follow-the-sun product team. He is a co-inventor of five U.S. patents for cybersecurity technology in Qualys offerings. Previously, Sumedh was an engineer at Intacct, an early cloud-based financial and accounting software provider. He also worked at Northwest Airlines developing complex algorithms for its yield and revenue management reservation system. He has a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering with distinction from Savitribai Phule Pune University. Keywords: Mythos, AI security, cybersecurity, zero-day, autonomous remediation, vulnerability management, CISO strategy, board reporting, Qualys, Sumedh Thakar, patch management, true risk, exposure management, AI attacks, first-party code

  7. Sep 3

    Episode 383 Deep Dive: Sarah Sloan | It Still Runs, But Can You Defend It? The End-of-Life Tech Reckoning

    The tech running hospitals, power grids and government services often still works. Sarah Sloan, Cisco’s Head of Cybersecurity Policy for APAC, joins KB to explain why that’s the problem, not the reassurance it sounds like. Drawing on a new ASPI report Cisco funded, “Past its use-by-date,” they get into why so much end-of-life tech is still in place (usually budgets and skills, not negligence), how AI and quantum turned a slow-burn risk into an urgent one, and why most organisations still can’t see the ageing gear in their own environment. Plus the upside: why moving early beats being forced by an incident. About Sarah: Sarah Sloan is Head of Cybersecurity Policy APAC, Cisco where she leads public sector engagement on cybersecurity policy matters across the region. With over 15 years’ experience across government, industry, and consulting — including more than a decade focused on cyber and technology — Sarah has held senior roles in the Australian Government and leading global technology firms, driving policy development, public-private sector partnerships, and national cybersecurity priorities. She holds a Bachelor of Laws (Hons) and Bachelor of Asia-Pacific Studies from the Australian National University (ANU), and postgraduate qualifications in legal practice, international law, and Japanese studies. Sarah is also Chair of the Australian Industry Information Association’s (AIIA) National Security and Cyber Resilience Policy Advisory Network. Keywords: end-of-life technology, legacy systems, critical infrastructure, cybersecurity governance, ASPI, Cisco, Legacy Five, board risk, post-quantum cryptography, AI cyber threats, SOCI Act, technology lifecycle, cost of downtime, CISO, digital resilience

About

Unlike every other security podcast, we don’t get stuck down in the technical weeds. Our remit is to speak with experts around the globe at the strategic level – how security technology can improve the experience and risk optimisation for every organisation. The Voice of Cyber® - In Partnership with Vanta

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