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Hacker Valley Studio

Hacker Valley Media

Welcome back to the show! Hacker Valley Studio podcast features Host Ron Eddings, as he explores the world of cybersecurity through the eyes of professionals in the industry. We cover everything from inspirational real-life stories in tech, to highlighting influential cybersecurity companies, and we do so in a fun and enthusiastic way. We’re making cybersecurity accessible, creating a whole new form of entertainment: cybertainment.

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  • 24 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 33 min
  • English

Episodes 24

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  • S6 · E427
    May 26 · 35 min

    Why Smart People Fall for Deepfakes with Perry Carpenter

    What if the most sophisticated attack has nothing to do with your firewall? In a world where AI can clone voices, re-lip-sync politicians, and spread a fake newscast to 200,000 people in days, the real target has always been your brain. Ron sits down with Perry Carpenter, Chief Deception Strategist at KnowBe4, to unpack why we're still getting fooled in 2026 and what we can actually do about it. Perry gets into the neuroscience behind why our brains are wired the way they are, how attackers exploit that, and what it really takes to build better instincts in a world full of AI-generated content. You'll also want to stick around for the live demos, where Perry breaks down why they worked and how to spot the tells. Impactful Moments 00:00 - Introduction 02:15 - The myth: smart people don't get fooled 05:20 - Flashback segment: the Ireland deepfake and why it went viral 06:15 - Guest introduction: Perry Carpenter 09:50 - Exploiting cultural bias and tribal instincts 13:45 - Live deepfake demo: face and body replacement in real time 15:30 - Synthetic media vs. deepfake: what's the difference? 20:40 - Breaking down a deepfake: what made it convincing 23:00 - Overproof: why bad deepfakes try too hard 27:15 - System 1 vs. System 2 thinking in cybersecurity 29:45 - The FAIK framework: freeze, analyze, investigate, know 32:40 - Ron's closing reflection Links Connect with our guest, Perry Carpenter, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/perrycarpenter Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams Love Hacker Valley Studio? Pick up some swag: https://store.hackervalley.com Become a sponsor of the show: https://hackervalley.com/work-with-us/

  • S6 · E426
    May 18 · 35 min

    Who Owns Your AI Security Policy? with Chris Cochran

    Right now, someone in your organization is probably feeding sensitive data into an AI system that nobody approved. So when something goes wrong, who's responsible? And more critically, do you even have a policy in place to answer that question? Ron Eddings sits down with his Hacker Valley co-founder, Chris Cochran, now serving as SANS Field CISO and VP of AI Security, to talk about his freshly released SANS AI Security Maturity Model, a practical framework built for security leaders who need to stop philosophizing and start making decisions. They cover the three pillars of AI security maturity: utilizing AI for defense, protecting AI itself, and governing it across the organization. Chris then gets real about where most enterprises actually stand (hint: not as far along as they think). Listen for a conversation that meets you wherever you are: skeptic, early adopter, or somewhere in between. Impactful Moments 00:00 - Introduction 03:00 - Chris Cochran: from Co-Founder to SANS Field CISO 04:20 - Your board is pushing AI before security is ready 06:00 - Tiers of AI uses: summarization to full automation 07:50 - When AI shouldn't make the final call 10:10 - Bite-sized AI: starting small in the enterprise 11:45 - Introducing the SANS AI Security Maturity Model 13:20 - You can no longer afford to be an AI skeptic 16:30 - Three buckets: utilize, protect, and govern AI 18:50 - Fact or Cap: what level of maturity is your enterprise? 21:00 - Retroactive vendor risk and the AI explosion 23:05 - Agentic Identity: workforce, non-human, and beyond 25:00 - What works in the agentic identity space? 27:05 - Blockchain for agent identity: promising or hype? 29:00 - A Message for the next generation of practitioners 31:30 - Ron's closing take: who owns your AI policy? Links Connect with Chris Cochran on LinkedIn: ​​https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrishvm/ Download the SANS AI Security Maturity Model: https://www.sans.org/mlp/2026-ai-security-maturity-model-ebook Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams Join our creative mastermind and stand out as a cybersecurity professional: https://www.patreon.com/hackervalleystudio Love Hacker Valley Studio? Pick up some swag: https://store.hackervalley.com Continue the conversation by joining our Discord: https://hackervalley.com/discord Become a sponsor of the show to amplify your brand: https://hackervalley.com/work-with-us/

  • S6 · E425
    May 1 · 34 min

    Turning 30,000 Findings Into 50 That Matter with Dan Pagel and Brad Hibbert

    Mythos just found 30,000 new vulnerabilities, and now every security team is asking the same question: what actually matters? In this episode, Ron Eddings sits down with Dan Pagel, CEO at Brinqa, and Brad Hibbert COO & CSO at Brinqa, to break down the Anthropic Mythos moment that rattled the security industry. From the panic of millions of new findings dropping overnight to the strategy of narrowing them down to the 50 that actually matter in YOUR environment, this episode is a masterclass in exposure management at machine speed. Dan and Brad share how Brinqa helps organizations make sense of massive volumes of findings, correlating data across 260+ connectors, enriching vulnerability context, and delivering clear, explainable actions to IT operations teams. They also tackle the bigger question: how do you build enough trust in AI to let it take autonomous action on your behalf? The answer starts with better data, better explainability, and knowing when to keep humans in (or on) the loop. Impactful Moments 00:00 - Introduction 02:00 - What just happened? Breaking down the Anthropic Mythos moment 04:10 - Why most new findings don’t apply to your environment 07:12 - What Mythos means to the broader market 09:09 - Why AI-driven discovery isn’t slowing down 11:00 - The gap between security and IT ops: how explainability closes it 13:38 - How fast you should go through findings 15:53 - Why MTTR is the wrong metric and what businesses actually care about 18:03 - Why real-time visibility is replacing scheduled scanning 19:50 - Human IN the loop vs. human ON the loop 22:14 - What happens when AI hallucinates? 27:20 - Why we’re over and under-estimating the impact of AI 29:54 - The immediate win Brinqa achieves for its customers 31:50 - What CISOs are really asking now: "What does good look like?" Links Connect with our guest, Dan Pagel, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpagel/ Connect with our guest, Brad Hibbert, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradhibbert/ Learn more about Brinqa: https://www.brinqa.com/ Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams Love Hacker Valley Studio? Pick up some swag: https://store.hackervalley.com Become a sponsor of the show to amplify your brand: https://hackervalley.com/work-with-us/

  • S1 · E424
    April 24 · 39 min

    Killing the Playbook with Agentic AI with Allan Alford and Tom Findling

    SOAR promised to close the loop in the SOC and fell flat. Agentic AI is finally delivering what a decade of playbooks couldn’t. In this episode, Ron sits down with Allan Alford, SVP at NTT Global Data Centers, and Tom Findling, co-founder and CEO of Conifers.ai. They cover why static playbooks broke under real-world conditions and how agentic systems are flipping the SOC operating model. They get into hallucination guardrails, human-on-the-loop versus human-in-the-loop, and the QR-code phishing investigation an agent solved on its own without being told how. The conversation closes on trust thresholds, the speed of enterprise adoption, and Allan's blunt warning to any CISO trying to slow this train down… you're already on the tracks. Impactful Moments 00:00 - Intro 02:30 - Why the lazy sysadmin always wins 05:15 - Why SOAR fell flat 08:00 - Guardrails, hallucinations, and showing the work 13:00 - The SOC AI holy grail 15:30 - The moment you start saying we 17:30 - QR-code phishing the agent solved alone 19:00 - Why playbooks were never going to scale 28:00 - Earning trust at enterprise scale 33:30 - Stand in front of this revolution and lose 35:40 - Risk quantification on business steroids Links Connect with our guest, Tom Findling, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomfindling/ Learn more about Conifers.ai at https://www.conifers.ai Connect with our guest, Allan Alford, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allanalford/ ___ Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams Love Hacker Valley Studio? Pick up some swag: https://store.hackervalley.com Become a sponsor of the show to amplify your brand: https://hackervalley.com/work-with-us/

Showing 21–24 of 24 episodes