The Defender's Advantage Podcast

The Defender’s Advantage Podcast explores the world of cyber security and Mandiant through three distinct tracks. Threat Trends: Listen twice a month as host Luke McNamara interviews guests on the latest in cyber security research, the cyber landscape, and the latest news from Mandiant. Frontline Stories: Listen to Kerry Matre monthly as she is joined by notable guests on the frontlines of cyber security, including Mandiant customers, security professionals, and executives​. Skills Gap: Listen to Kevin Bordlemay each month for this series focusing on thoughts, ideas, and initiatives for narrowing the skills gap in cyber security.

M-Trends 2024 with Mandiant Consulting Vice President Jurgen Kutscher

Jurgen Kutscher, Mandiant Vice President for Consulting, joins host Luke McNamara to discuss the findings of the M-Trends 2024 report.  Jurgen shares his perspective on the "By the Numbers" data, the theme of evasion of detection in this year's report, and how Mandiant consultants have been leveraging AI in purple and red teaming operations. For more on the M-Trends 2024 report: http://cloud.google.com/security/m-trends

04-29
25:53

Assessing the State of Multifaceted Extortion Operations

Kimberly Goody, Head of Mandiant's Cyber Crime Analysis team and Jeremy Kennelly, Lead Analyst of the same team join host Luke McNamara to breakdown the current state of ransomware and data theft extortion. Kimberly and Jeremy describe how 2023 differed from the activity they witnessed the year prior, and how changes in the makeup of various groups have played out in the threat landscape, why certain sectors see more targeting, and more.

04-11
40:54

Hunting for "Living off the Land" Activity

Host Luke McNamara is joined by Mandiant consultants Shanmukhanand Naikwade and Dan Nutting to discuss hunting for threat actors utilizing "living off the land" (LotL) techniques. They discuss how LotL techniques differ from traditional malware based attacks, ways to differentiate between normal and malicious use of utilities, Volt Typhoon, and more. 

03-29
42:32

Director of NSA's Cybersecurity Collaboration Center on Trends in 2024

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. 

03-14
25:48

The North Korean IT Workers

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

02-21
34:40

Prescriptions for a Healthy Cybersecurity Future with Google Cloud's OCISO

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

02-07
44:27

Is The CTI Lifecycle Due For An Update?

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

01-25
28:08

Threat Trends: Hacktivists' Continued Use of DDoS

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. 

01-10
44:50

Threat Trends: Tales from the 2023 Trenches

Doug Bienstock and Josh Madelay, Regional Leads for Mandiant Consulting, join host Luke McNamara to walk through some of the trends they have witnessed responding to breaches in 2023.  Josh and Doug cover what is happening with business email compromise (BEC), common initial infection vectors, social engineering tactics, and more. 

12-12
37:47

Threat Trends: DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in Conversation with Kevin Mandia

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)

10-25
20:44

Threat Trends: Addressing Risk in the Cloud with Wiz

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 

10-19
37:05

Threat Trends: Unraveling WyrmSpy and DragonEgg Mobile Malware with Lookout

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_

09-20
32:42

Threat Trends: The Implications of the MOVEit Compromise

Charles Carmakal, CTO for Mandiant Consulting, joins host Luke McNamara to discuss the long tail impact of FIN11's compromise of the MOVEit file transfer solution. Charles breaks down some of the differences with this compromise in comparison to FIN11's previous operations, why the impact from this operation may impact organizations for some time, and what this spells for the changing landscape of multifaceted extortion. For more from Mandiant on MOVEit:  https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/zero-day-moveit-data-theftIf you enjoyed this episode,  please rate and leave us a review on your platform of choice! 

07-20
27:51

Threat Trends: A Requirements-Driven Approach to Cyber Threat Intelligence

Dr. Jamie Collier (Senior Threat Intelligence Advisor, Mandiant) joins host Luke McNamara to discuss the recent white paper from Mandiant about developing a requirements-driven approach to intelligence, challenges organizations face in this area, and the importance of recurring stakeholder feedback to a well-functioing CTI team. Follow Jamie at @TheCollierJam on Twitter. For more on A Requirements-Driven Approach to Cyber Threat Intelligence, please see: https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/requirements-driven-approach-cti 

06-16
27:39

Frontline Stories: Crisis Communications During a Breach

Dan Wire from Mandiant joins host Kerry Matre to discuss the ins and outs of crisis communications during a breach as well as what you can do to prepare for a crisis.

06-06
31:26

Threat Trends: UNC961 and How Managed Defense Approaches Threat Hunting

Ryan Tomcik, Dan Fenwick, and Tim Martin join host Luke McNamara to discuss how Managed Defense conducts proactive hunting, illustrated by several UNC961 intrusions. For more, please see: https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/unc961-multiverse-financially-motivatedFollow Ryan @heferyzan and Tim @Sa1jak on Twitter. 

05-26
30:20

Frontline Stories: The Executive's Role in Cybersecurity

What role do executives and the board play in cybersecurity and breach management. Hear from Jesse Jordan and Howard Israel of Mandiant discuss their experiences helping executives get the right information from their security leaders and understanding their role during a breach.

05-17
33:17

Threat Trends: Bonus Episode - How Will AI Impact Threat Intelligence?

The endless battle of threat actors versus cybersecurity professionals may come down to who deploys AI better.  In this interview from RSA, John Hultquist, Senior Manager, Mandiant Intelligence, surmises how the bad guys may use AI in the near future to scale attacks, while Vijay Ganti, Head of Product Management, Threat Intelligence, Detection & Analytics for Google Cloud Security, walks through the AI use cases that will help organizations better defend against those attacks.  Hosted by Dan Lamorena, Head of Mandiant Product Marketing.

05-09
09:22

Threat Trends: M-Trends 2023

Mandiant's Kirstie Failey and Jake Nicastro join host Luke McNamara to break down the findings from the 2023 M-Trends report. Kirstie and Jake cover some of the notable trends gleaned from Mandiant breach investigations over the past year around dwell time, ransomware, top initial intrusion vectors, and more. For more on Mandiant's 14th iteration of M-Trends, check out: https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/m-trends-2023Follow Kirstie (@Gigs_Security) and Jake (@nicastronaut) on Twitter. 

04-24
40:40

Frontline Stories: Exposure Management Beyond Vulnerabilities

Jonathan Cran, Lead for Mandiant Attack Surface Management at Google Cloud, joins host Kerry Matre to discuss the evolution of vulnerability and exposure management and how important comprehensive approaches are to mitigating cyber risk.Jonathan shares his experiences from BugBounty, penetration testing and working with customers to solve the growing problem of too many CVEs, too little prioritization methods. He walks through the importance of an intelligence-led approach to exposure management, how CISOs can think about their organization and how to make informed business decisions. 

04-11
25:48

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