One of the most common security questions that organizations ask is how to better their security posture without exceeding their tight budget -- not an easy task. Brian and Mandiant Sr. Director of Customer Engineering Morris Hicks dig into Mandiant Security Validation’s ability to help organizations optimize their existing investments and cut out unnecessary overlap. 

The world of incident response has slowly been moving further from the “ninja-like” it's been known for. Purple team extraordinaire Evan Peña revisits the podcast to talk about changes to incident response, purple teaming, and the recent shift toward collaboration with other teams to eliminate today’s largest threats.

In our 100th episode, Brian brings on longtime friend and colleague Colby DeRodeff to talk about past projects, the surge of threat intelligence, and Mandiant Security Validation’s rapid expansion within the market. 

To commemorate the 99th episode, Brian brings on his two co-producers -- Daniel Craig and Katie Billigmeier -- to reminisce about the podcast's beginnings, how it's grown in the past three years, and each of their favorite episodes.

Devon Goforth has been with Mandiant Security Validation (formerly Verodin) since its early startup days in 2015, and had infused his background of electrical engineering, physics, and math with an interest in cyber security. He shares not only how the company and solutions have changed, but also current influences on the threat ecosystem, risks, and hacker trends.

Board members are not only crucial for helping lead a company in the right direction, but nowadays they also offer crucial cyber security guidance. And those with a legal background, like FireEye’s Alexa King, provide an even more valuable perspective in the event of a breach and help organizations mitigate risks as an organization evolves.

Having been a board member for technology and cyber security companies since the 90s, Matt Bigge has fine-tuned the art of being an effective board member. He and Brian discuss the evolution of a board member’s role as a company changes, adapting interactions with leadership, and some words of wisdom. 

Our focus on board members continues as Kara Nortman, Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures and a board member with several technology and cyber security companies, talks about her key responsibilities as a cloud-native specialist, the importance of nurturing positive relationships, and the growing trend of third-party solutions.

The unknown factor of cyber security risk are keeping more CEOs up at night than ever before, and many of them view it as priority number one in areas of the business to address. Jay Leek brings his perspective as former Blackstone CISO, ClearSky Security co-founder, and board member for a number of cyber security companies, where he communicates today’s risk. 

As someone who has worked as a FireEye executive and been on a board member for several publicly traded companies, Julie Cullivan has been able to closely witness the dichotomy between the two. She chats with Brian about how board members can influence real cyber security development.To see the video version of this episode on YouTube, click here.