Holistic Cybersecurity: Philosophy Meets Practice

Science is what you know

Philosophy is what you don’t know

 -- Bertand Russell

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

 -- Aristotle

On this Very Special Episode of InSecurity, Matt Stephenson moderated a chat between SMU CISO George Finney and BlackBerry Global VP of Engineering Rich Thompson. We covered a range of topics, but narrowed the field to the Big Ideas of Habit, Neuroscience & Artificial Intelligence and Behavior & Technology. The notion was to consider how those things influence our approach to Cybersecurity. Dig it…

About George Finney

George Finney (@WellAwareSecure) is the CSO for SMU in Dallas, Texas and is the author of the new book, Well Aware: Master the Nine Cybersecurity Habits to Protect Your Future as well as several others. He is a Chief Information Security Officer that believes that people are the key to solving our cybersecurity challenges. George has worked in Cybersecurity for nearly 20 years and has helped startups, global telecommunications firms, and nonprofits improve their security posture. As a part of his passion for education, George has taught cybersecurity at Southern Methodist University and is the author of several cybersecurity books including No More Magic Wands: Transformative Cybersecurity Change for Everyone. He has been recognized by Security Magazine as one of their top cybersecurity leaders in 2018 and is a part of the Texas CISO Council, is a member of the Board of Directors for the Palo Alto Networks FUEL User Group, and is an Advisory Board member for SecureWorld. George holds a Juris Doctorate from Southern Methodist University and a Bachelor of Arts from St. John’s College and as well as multiple cybersecurity certifications including the CISSP, CISM, and CIPP.

About Rich Thompson

Rich Thompson (@TheRichThompson) is Vice President of Sales Engineering, North America at BlackBerry. He has 25+ years of experience in security. This includes 21 years leading security efforts at the regional and national level in the retail industry, including stops at Big Lots, Toys Я Us, ESPRIT, J Crew… shoutout to 90s fashion. From there, Rich spent 5 years leading Sales Engineering and Professional Services efforts in the enterprise software industry. He has experience in forensics, incident response, electronic discovery, information risk management and governance. Rich joined Cylance in October 2014 in order to help Cylance in the vision of protecting every endpoint under the sun. He also has surprisingly wide-ranging musical tastes.

About Matt Stephenson

Insecurity Podcast host Matt Stephenson (@packmatt73) leads the Broadcast Media team at BlackBerry, which puts me in front of crowds, cameras, and microphones all over the world. I am the regular host of the InSecurity podcast and video series at events around the globe.

I have spent the last 10 years in the world of Data Protection and Cybersecurity. Since 2016, I have been with Cylance (now BlackBerry) extolling the virtues of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and how, when applied to network security, can wrong-foot the bad guys. Prior to the COVID shutdown, I was on the road over 100 days a year doing live malware demonstrations for audiences from San Diego to DC to London to Abu Dhabi to Singapore to Sydney. One of the funniest things I've ever been a part of was blowing up a live instance of NotPetya 6 hours after the news broke... in Washington DC... directly across the street from FBI HQ... as soon as we activated it a parade of police cars with sirens blaring roared past the building we were in. I'm pretty they weren't there for us, but you never know...

Every week on the InSecurity Podcast, I get to interview interesting people doing interesting things all over the world of cybersecurity and the extended world of hacking. Sometimes, that means hacking elections or the coffee supply chain... other times that means social manipulation or the sovereign wealth fund of a national economy.

InSecurity is about talking with the people who build, manage or wreck the systems that we have put in place to make the world go round...

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