Safe Mode Podcast

Safe Mode Podcast
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Podcast by Safe Mode Podcast

  1. How government and Industry can raise the cost of cybercrime

    5D AGO

    How government and Industry can raise the cost of cybercrime

    Sophos CEO Joe Levy and Director of Government Partnerships Alex Rose join Safe Mode from Washington, D.C. to discuss what meaningful public-private cybersecurity partnership looks like right now—moving beyond “window dressing” to real operational collaboration with agencies like CISA and the FBI. They break down the shift from Secure by Design to Secure by Demand, arguing that procurement and market forces must pressure software vendors to ship safer defaults, while AI simultaneously accelerates both vulnerability discovery and attacker capability. The conversation also spotlights why small and midsize businesses are disproportionately exposed yet often underserved, and previews Sophos’s upcoming CISO Advantage concept to help close the massive cybersecurity leadership gap. Finally, they examine rising open-source software risk—including maintainers being overwhelmed by low-quality AI-generated vulnerability reports—and why addressing OSS security will require coordinated action across government and industry. In our reporter chat, Greg talks with Tim Starks about the oral arguments held at the Supreme Court in relation to a case that deals with the future of geofence warrants.

    43 min
  2. Proving Identity in the age of agents

    APR 23

    Proving Identity in the age of agents

    As AI makes deepfakes and voice cloning more convincing, attackers are shifting away from traditional vulnerabilities and focusing on identity as the easiest path to account takeover and fraud. In this conversation, Eran Haggiag of Glide Identity discusses what it will take to protect identity in an agentic world—how to prove a real user approved an action, how to establish accountability when software acts on someone’s behalf, and why cryptographic, hardware-rooted signals may be the clearest way out of the cat-and-mouse cycle. In our reporter chat, Greg talks with Matt Kapko about what led to the Vercel breach that dominated this week's headlines.

    27 min
  3. The federal government's most underrated cybersecurity tool

    APR 16

    The federal government's most underrated cybersecurity tool

    In this episode of Safe Mode, we sit down with Philip George, Executive Technical Strategist at Merlin Group to talk about the real challenges federal agencies face at the intersection of cybersecurity, AI adoption, and post-quantum cryptography. Philip breaks down the disconnect between cyber spending and mission outcomes, why rushing into AI without sound identity management and data integrity is a recipe for disaster, and what evolving federal cryptographic requirements and shortened certificate lifecycles mean for government IT. We dig into why visibility — simply knowing what's on your network — remains the most powerful defensive posture regardless of the threat, explore the tension between zero trust and agentic AI, and hear Philip's counterintuitive take that the answer to AI-driven security challenges might just be more AI, purpose-built and narrow in scope. Also, Greg sits down with Chris Townsend, Elastic’s Global VP of Public Sector, at the Elastic Public Sector Summit to unpack how agencies can operationalize data amid rising cyber threats. Townsend explains why open standards and cross-agency data sharing matter—and how agentic AI can help modernize SOC operations by prioritizing alerts and speeding response times.

In our reporter chat, Greg Otto and Derek Johnson break down the surge of AI-in-cybersecurity developments—from Anthropic’s Project Glasswing and the “too dangerous to release” Mythos model to OpenAI’s trusted-access approach—focusing on what these tools could mean for vulnerability discovery and the balance between real risk and hype.

    45 min

  4. APR 10

    What does industry think of the White House's cybersecurity strategy?

    Bob Ackerman (founder of Allegis Cyber and a partner at DataTribe) joins Safe Mode to talk about where the new national cybersecurity strategy is trying to push the industry—especially around more open, coordinated “active disruption” with government support (and what that does not mean, like hack-back). He shares what he’s hearing from leaders who want clearer “rules of the road,” and why it’s tough to move from reactive collaboraBob Ackerman (founder of Allegiance Cyber and a partner at DataTribe) joins Safe Mode to talk about where the new national cybersecurity strategy is trying to push the industry—especially around more open, coordinated “active disruption” with government support (and what that does not mean, like hack-back). He shares what he’s hearing from leaders who want clearer “rules of the road,” and why it’s tough to move from reactive collaboration to getting ahead of threats. The conversation then turns to AI and why the next couple of years could get “a little spicy,” with offensive tooling accelerating fast and defenders struggling with visibility, noise, and prioritization. Ackerman’s bottom line: don’t get distracted by shiny objects—double down on fundamentals and hygiene, because you can’t defend what you can’t see.tion to getting ahead of threats. The conversation then turns to AI and why the next couple of years could get “a little spicy,” with offensive tooling accelerating fast and defenders struggling with visibility, noise, and prioritization. Ackerman’s bottom line: don’t get distracted by shiny objects—double down on fundamentals and hygiene, because you can’t defend what you can’t see. In our reporter chat, Greg talks with Tim Starks about the proposed CISA budget and warnings that Iran is going after critical infrastructure in cyber domain.

    31 min
  5. When iPhone exploits turn into commodities

    MAR 26

    When iPhone exploits turn into commodities

    A sophisticated iPhone exploit kit known as DarkSword has escaped the world of targeted espionage and landed in public view—leaked on GitHub in a form that researchers say is trivial to repurpose and deploy. With the barrier to entry collapsing to “copy, paste, host,” the immediate concern is no longer whether advanced actors can use it, but how quickly criminal groups and opportunistic attackers will operationalize it against the enormous population of out-of-date iOS devices.
 In this episode, Jame’s Michael Covington joins us for a practitioner-level breakdown of what the DarkSword leak changes, who’s exposed, and what defenders can do right now. We dig into the real enterprise blast radius for organizations with BYOD and partially managed fleets, what meaningful detection and response looks like on iOS when visibility is limited, and how to prioritize patch enforcement, quarantine decisions, and Lockdown Mode for high-risk users. We also zoom out to the bigger pattern: highly capable mobile exploitation frameworks (including recent reporting on Coruna) increasingly surfacing outside tightly controlled circles—reshaping the threat model for Apple devices in the enterprise.

In our reporter chat, Greg talks with Matt Kapko on what they heard during their many conversations during their time at the RSAC 2026 Conference.

    35 min
  6. Behind the scenes of the Socksescort takedown

    MAR 19

    Behind the scenes of the Socksescort takedown

    In this episode, we sit down with Chris Formosa to break down the Socksescort disruption—a proxy botnet powered by AVRecon that compromised edge devices at scale. Chris walks us through why the operation was so dangerous, how investigators tracked its command-and-control infrastructure, and what changed between the 2023 disclosure and the eventual takedown in coordination with the Department of Justice. We also dig into why edge devices remain prime targets, where most organizations still have visibility gaps, and what the next evolution of this threat could be. In our reporter chat, Greg Otto and Tim Starks break down DarkSword, a iOS exploit kit that could impact hundreds of millions of people.

    35 min
  7. What comes next for Trump's cybersecurity plan?

    MAR 12

    What comes next for Trump's cybersecurity plan?

    On this episode of Safe Mode, Greg Otto and Tim Starks look past the headline release of President Trump’s new cyber strategy and focus on what comes next: the promised follow-on guidance, the rollout of an interagency “cell” spanning DOJ, State, FBI, DoD and others that pairs cyber operations with diplomacy and arrests, and the state-by-state critical infrastructure pilot programs designed to test what actually works before scaling. In our interview segment, acting Federal CISO Mike Duffy lays out his priorities for 2026.

    29 min
  8. A plea to improve quantum security in the federal government

    MAR 5

    A plea to improve quantum security in the federal government

    In this episode, we sit down with Gharun Lacy, Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Cyber and Technology Security Directorate at the U.S. Department of State, who issues a stark warning: no organization can defend against quantum-enabled cyber threats alone. Hear Lacy explain why adversaries like China are already harvesting encrypted data today—planning to crack it years from now when quantum computers arrive. He breaks down the "harvest now, decrypt later" threat and why your encrypted data may outlive multiple leadership cycles, creating risks that stretch across generations like an accordion through time. Lacy challenges both public and private sector defenders to stop thinking about their post-quantum encryption plans in isolation. Instead, he argues we must defend "holistically as an ecosystem," with industries and sectors coordinating their transition to quantum-resistant algorithms by 2035. But is that timeline fast enough? In our reporter chat, Greg talks with Derek Johnson about a new study that finds that LLMs can used to deanonymize online profiles.

    18 min
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Ratings & Reviews

4.9
out of 5
8 Ratings

About

Podcast by Safe Mode Podcast

Information

  • Creator
    Safe Mode Podcast
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    131
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © All rights reserved
  • Show Website
    Safe Mode Podcast

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