Podcast
Crucial Tech
Hosted by Lou Covey · EN
Unraveling the technology that affects us all but that few of us understand, in a format to give you a basic understanding in the time it takes to drive to and from the grocery store.
17episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Episode 12.6 - Reporter's Notebook on Breach Irrelevance
2w ago00:42:36Tap to summarizeAT the RSAC Conference this year a new marketing buzzword appeared in several interviews, most particularly DataKrypto and Cy4Data Labs. They are doing important work, but my interviews with them indicate they need to lift their heads up now and then and look around. Their competitive field is bigger than they think. More on Cyber Protection Magazine next week.
Transcribe →Episode 12.5 - The Future of Truth, Stephen Rosenbaum
3w ago00:23:58Tap to summarizeI talk about the nature of truth in an Ai world with documentarian Steven Rosenbaum in advance of the release next week of his book The Future of Truth, not to be mistaken by the 2025 book of the same name by film maker Werner Herzog.
Transcribe →Episode 12.4 - Forward, into the past: AI makes legacy media relevant again
4w ago00:34:30Tap to summarizeThe dirty secret of digital media for the past two decades has been that it doesn't really work. It's just a lot cheaper and easier than actual marketing. Lou Covey and Joe Basques of Cyber Protection Magazine have watched it in its genesis to where it is today and talk about how AI has totally flipped the script, how it changes the metrics and purpose of content and how to make it work for your company.
Transcribe →Episode 12.3 -- $500/m security with MirrorTab/Haven and DNSfllter
Apr 2300:42:40Tap to summarizeThe great conundrum of business is how rare it is for a company to find markets they can dominate. Oh, they all say that’s what they want to do, but when asked about their business they respond, “Some of our customers are in the Fortune 100/500/1000.” That response always leaves us cold. The biggest companies will always buy one of everything just to make sure they don’t miss out.Cybersecurity is not immune to this case of tunnel vision. 90 percent of companies in the industry target 10 percent of the available market in the form of medium to large enterprises. Meanwhile, small to medium businesses (SMBs) can’t get cybersecurity companies to answer the phone unless they are will to spend six figures on tools and services. We don’t think that a very good idea. SMBs make up the backbone of any supply chain and without effective security, they become massive holes for the large companies that contract with them.We’ve been playing around with the idea of how much it really costs to make your SMB network secure and we’ve determined that it can be done for less than $500 a month. No, it’s not comprehensive, but even companies with million-dollar security budgets get hacked. Our idea is to plug the most obvious holes. Sure enough, we are finding companies that do just that. We are launching this campaign today with two interviews of security providers that have competint/overlapping services: MirrorTab and it’s new product Haven, and an old-guard company, DNSFilter. The services these companies offer will alert users to questionable websites or emails. Considering that represents 95% of all breaches, that pretty much covers your business like a blanket. The cost? Free to $5 a month.We suggest you call one or both of them today, but before you do, listen to our itnerviews with Mikey Pruitt, head of AI labs at DNS Filter, and MirrorTab CEO Brian Silverstein. You will learn some valuable information.
Transcribe →Episode 12.2 - Putting AI and security into perspective
Apr 1600:26:16Tap to summarizeBack in January I had a chat with Doug Kersten, CISO for Appfire, that had soemwise words about the intersection of Ai and security. He said AI amplifies existing weaknesses. It doesn't create new threats. AI-driven attacks (phishing, deepfakes) succeed by exploiting poor security fundamentals like weak training and monitoring. And that's what we have to worry about most. This conversation was about rational response to the use of AI in security. Seems timely.
Transcribe →Season 12.1 - Reporter's notebook: Orca Security, intro to CNAPP
Apr 700:08:53Tap to summarizeThe 12th season of Crucial Tech begins today after a month off. But we haven't been napping. The 2026 RSAC Conference consumed my time and I came back with some definition of the cybersecurity industry. Mostly I learned just how bad the industry is explaining itself to its customers.One area I've been meaning to investigate is the Cloud-native application protection platforms (CNAPP) sector simply because it is so very basic to stopping security breaches. It is also very crowded by established players and newcomers. In this interview we talk with one of the first companies to enter the space, Orca Security and their CEO Gil Geron about what makes them useful and why few people have heard of them.
Transcribe →Episode 11.24 - Is the AI industry collapse beginning?
Mar 600:10:24Tap to summarizeTwo weeks ago I did in interview with Claude, ChatGPT and Grok about what could possibly cause the collapse of the AI industry. Little did I know that within the next two weeks there would be a convergence of events that might create that collapse. So this is part two of that podcast.And this podcast is the final one of season 11. We will be back after the RSA Conference with Season 12.
Transcribe →Episode 11.23 - DROP and give me privacy! New California mechanism for deleting your records
Feb 2600:20:09Tap to summarizeOn January 1, California's Delete Request and Opt-out Platform (DROP) went live and almost 200,000 California residents have already signed up. We talked with Captain Compliance CISO, Alex Proctor about the importance of this platform and the impact on the data industry.More next week on Cyber Protection Magazine but to get you up and running, here's the link to the platform, and here's the link to the list of data brokers registered with the state of California. It has some surprises.
Transcribe →Episode 11.22 - A conversation with Claude: AI industry on a knife edge
Feb 2000:16:13Tap to summarizeI read news stories every day, several times a day. When it comes to AI I hear that the industry is booming/it's crashing/it's a miracle/it's a nightmare. Everyone has an opinion and it isn't nuanced. It is also all speculation. I wondered who could give me a balanced view of whether AI will survive or thrive in it's current form. Then I was listening to one of my favorite podcasters, Mark Stockley, who had a guest that used AI created an AI companion to work out ideas for his own content. I thought, "Why not?"So I fired up Claude Sonnet 2.6 and asked about the future of AI. the answers were remarkably balanced, thoughtful... and scary as hell.
Transcribe →Episode 11.21 - Vibe coding losing it's shine, but we're trying it anyway
Feb 1100:22:16Tap to summarizeAt the beginning of 2025, vibe coding (using LLMs to create computer code) was all the rage. By June, the bloom had fallen off the rose. Studies showed professional coders were losing skill, and falsely believing they were made more productive using it rather than doing it themselves. This failure of AI to produce efficiency made the fad of vibe coding crash faster than any other AI-related application. Companies producing tools to support the work lost 60% of traffic by September.Undeterred the editorial staff of Cyber Protection Magazine jumped into the fad with both feet... because the practice still has value for people who don't know jack about coding but have a few ideas. Patrick Boch and Lou Covey talk about their vibe journey to date. Don't pass up the poll.
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