The Defender's Advantage Podcast

Shanmukhanand Naikwade, a cybersecurity consultant, and Dan Nutting, an expert in threat hunting, dive deep into the nuances of 'living off the land' (LotL) cyber attacks. They discuss how attackers exploit legitimate tools to blend in and evade detection, contrasting these tactics with traditional malware. The conversation highlights the significance of adapting detection methods and utilizing threat intelligence effectively. They also shed light on the Volt Typhoon group, exploring its sophisticated tactics and the critical role of logging in cybersecurity.

Morgan Adamski, Director of the NSA's Cybersecurity Collaboration Center (CCC) joins host Luke McNamara to discuss the threat posed by Volt Typhoon and other threat actors utilizing living off the land (LotL) techniques, zero-day exploitation trends, how the CCC works with private sector organizations,  and more. 

Principal Analyst Michael Barnhart joins host Luke McNamara to discuss Mandiant's research into the threat posed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) usage of IT workers to gain access to enterprises. For more on Mandiant's analysis of North Korea's cyber capabilities, please see: https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/north-korea-cyber-structure-alignment-2023

Taylor Lehmann (Director, Google Cloud Office of the CISO) and Bill Reid (Security Architect, Google Cloud Office of the CISO) join host Luke McNamara to discuss their takeaways from the last year of threat activity witnessed by enterprises within healthcare and life sciences. They discuss applying threat intelligence to third-party risk management, threat modeling, and more. For more on the work of Google Cloud's Office of the CISO: https://cloud.google.com/solutions/security/board-of-directors?hl=en#additional-thought-leadership-resources

Mandiant Intelligence Advisor Renze Jongman joins host Luke McNamara to discuss his  blog on the CTI Process Hyperloop and applying threat intelligence to the needs of the security organization and larger enterprise. For more on this topic, please see: https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/cti-process-hyperloop

For our first episode of 2024, host Luke McNamara is joined by Mandiant Senior Technical Director Jose Nazario and Principal Analysts Alden Wahlstrom and Josh Palatucci, to discuss the hacktivist DDoS activity they tracked over the last year. 

Doug Bienstock and Josh Madelay, Regional Leads for Mandiant Consulting, discuss threat trends in 2023 including business email compromise, common initial infection vectors, social engineering tactics, theft of credentials from outsourcing vendors, Fin 11's activities, enhancing security measures, rise of adversary-in-the-middle techniques, and data theft by ransomware threat actors.

Host Luke McNamara is joined for this special episode highlighting October as Cybersecurity Awareness Month by Kevin Mandia and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Secretary Mayorkas and Kevin discuss the threat landscape,  collaboration between the private sector and government, improving the talent gap in cyber, and ongoing DHS initiatives to foster greater cyber security.  For more on the Department of Homeland Security and their work, please see: Cybersecurity | Homeland Security (dhs.gov)Shields Up | CISAJoint Cyber Defense Collaborative | CISAhttps://www.cisa.gov/securebydesignhttps://www.cisa.gov/secure-our-world https://www.cisa.gov/cybersecurity-awareness-monthAlejandro Mayorkas | Homeland Security (dhs.gov)

Host Luke McNamara is joined by Amitai Cohen, Attack Vector Intel Lead at Wiz to discuss trends in cloud security, managing risk, and more. For more on Wiz's research, please see: https://www.wiz.io/blog and https://www.wiz.io/crying-out-cloud 

Host Luke McNamara is joined by Kristina Balaam, Staff Threat Researcher at Lookout, to discuss her work attributing two new mobile malware families to APT41. For more on Lookout's report on WyrmSpy and DragonEgg: https://www.lookout.com/threat-intelligence/article/wyrmspy-dragonegg-surveillanceware-apt41Follow Kristina on X @chmodxx_