Shane Sims is back on the show with a gripping story. Seriously, if Netflix decided to make a movie or mini-series about this, I wouldn’t even be surprised…except this really happened and you’re about to get a front-row seat to how it unfolded. Shane wore a wire and infiltrated a cybercrime group back in 2005 that was stealing intellectual property from organizations, including defense contractors. Normally when you think of cybercrime groups, you don’t think in-person meetings or “wearing wires” to catch them in the act. But this group primarily exploited wireless networks to exfiltrate IP and sensitive data, and then turned around to extort the organization. Catching them in the act required Shane to go undercover. They met in hotel rooms with SWAT teams on stand-by, they met in vans to carry out attacks, and they finally gathered enough evidence to arrest and charge the suspects. Hear about all of that from start to finish in this epic episode.

This is our most intense episode to date, and it's a fascinating one. Peer into the world of the FBI and its response to cybercrime all the way back to the 1990s. Shane was a Supervisory Special Agent responsible for building a cyber offense unit and capabilities & led all cyber offensive operations in support of counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and cybercrime matters. Later, he transferred to the FBI's Critical Incident Response Group to help develop and lead a crisis response organization charged with countering WMD threats on US soil working closely with the Department of Defense's Joint Special Operations Command, White House, and other government agencies. After the FBI, Shane worked at PwC and KPMG for a number of years, and he is now the CEO of Kivu, a full-service cybersecurity consulting firm that offers services in three core divisions: advisory services, managed services, and response services.

Roberto Rodriguez (@Cyb3rWard0g) talks to us about what it’s like to be a Threat Researcher at the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center. We talk about how he got started, what a day in his life looks like, what the differences are between threat research, threat hunting, pentesting, etc...and we talk about resources that he’s created and that could help you out, including his online and interactive book called the Threat Hunter Playbook.

In this episode, Eric Lankford and Doug Levin join us to shine a light on the disturbing and dangerous cyber threats academic institutions are facing. Cyberattacks are a significant and growing threat to our nation’s K-12 public schools, students, and employees. There were ~350 publicly disclosed cybersecurity incidents that impacted K-12 schools in 2019. They primarily consisted of data breaches resulting in unauthorized disclosures of student/staff data, ransomware and other malware attacks, phishing attacks, and other social engineering scams as well as denial-of-service attacks. With only 5% of surveyed IT teams feeling that student data is at high risk. <10% of the annual IT budgets allocated to keeping data, systems, and users safe online, more must be done to help these under-resourced and ill-prepared schools to protect our children and their identities online! These gentlemen share what they are doing to help and why, and how the rest of us can step up to help!