Podcast
UnHack with Drex DeFord
Hosted by This Week Health · EN
Cyber-safety is patient-safety. On “UnHack,” Drex DeFord, veteran healthcare CIO and infused strategist, breaks down the biggest cybersecurity and risk challenges facing healthcare today. Drex and expert guests explore what happened, why it matters, and how to build real-world resilience. The show's a mostly plain-English, mostly non-technical discussion that dives into the people, process, and technology making healthcare more secure; and it's NOT just for cyber-professionals; it’s for everyone in a healthcare organization, because modern cybersecurity is a team-sport.
10episodes
Episodes
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Same Show, New Home — UnHack Moves to 229 May 15th
May 1500:01:18Tap to summarizeMay 15, 2026: Big news from Drex DeFord, starting May 15th, UnHack the Podcast and the Two-Minute Drill are moving to the 229 Project Podcast Channel. Same show, same mission, same Drex — just one unified home alongside Bill Russell and Sarah Richardson. The reason is simple: the This Week Health community was spread too thin across too many channels, making great content harder to find. Now everything lives in one place.Keep up to date on the latest in health IT:https://thisweekhealth.com/news/X: This Week HealthLinkedIn: This Week HealthDonate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer
Transcribe →How North Korea's Fake Company Compromised Millions | 2 Minute Drill with Drex DeFord
May 800:03:59Tap to summarizeNorth Korean threat actors didn't breach a firewall. They built a fake company. UNC1069 spent two weeks constructing a convincing Slack workspace, fake team members, and LinkedIn profiles to earn the trust of Jason Seaman -- lead maintainer of Axios, a JavaScript library downloaded over 100 million times a week. One Teams call. One file. Within hours, malicious code was live and reaching health systems everywhere. The attack skipped the $50M security stack entirely and went straight to the human. Drex breaks down what happened, why it worked, and asks the question every health IT leader needs to answer: have you mapped who in your organization carries that kind of leverage?Remember, Stay a Little ParanoidX: This Week Health LinkedIn: This Week Health Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer
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The Cyber Attack No One Can Survive Alone | Executive Interview with Josh Howell
May 500:18:24Tap to summarizeMay 5, 2026: What happens when attackers don't just break into your systems, they become you? Josh Howell, Healthcare CTO at Rubrik, joins Drex DeFord to unpack Rubrik's newly announced partnership with the American Hospital Association, a rigorous vetting process that signals a new standard in cyber risk validation. Josh draws on hundreds of ransomware recovery experiences to challenge how health systems think about resilience, recovery sequencing, and the identity control plane. Learn why the worst-case scenario in the 2026 Google Mandiant M-Trends report should keep every CISO up at night.Key Points:00:35 AHA Partnership Overview04:19 Turning Tools Into Outcomes10:50 Worst Case Scenario13:47 Secure by Design Zero TrustKeep up to date on the latest in health IT:https://thisweekhealth.com/news/X: This Week HealthLinkedIn: This Week HealthDonate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer
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Nurses Week Special on Florence Nightingale and the Future of Nursing | Newsday with Lisbeth Votruba
May 400:21:38Tap to summarizeMay 4, 2026: Lisbeth Votruba, Chief Clinical Officer at AvaSure, joins Bill Russell and Drex DeFord on Newsday to celebrate Nurses Week with a fascinating look at where nursing has been, and where it's going. From Florence's data-driven legacy to today's AI-powered virtual care, Lisbeth shares why nursing turnover is declining, why certification rates are rising, and why she sees technology not as a threat but as a path back to old-fashioned, human-centered nursing care. Key Points:02:38 Nurses Week Origins and Trends05:56 Ambient Documentation Reality Check08:51 AI for Safety and Liability18:03 Nurses at the Table ClosingKeep up to date on the latest in health IT:https://thisweekhealth.com/news/X: This Week HealthLinkedIn: This Week HealthDonate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer
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UnHack Rewind 2025: The Year Healthcare Cybersecurity Grew Up
May 200:12:13Tap to summarizeFrom crippling outages to AI-powered deepfakes, 2025 tested healthcare cybersecurity like never before. This year-end recap explores the moments that mattered most: how teams built resilience during system failures, why users became partners instead of "weak links," how identity became the new perimeter, and what it means when you can't trust your own eyes. Through powerful stories from the front lines, we revisit the lessons learned and the community that kept us standing. Because at the end of the day, cybersecurity is patient safety, and the work you do saves lives.
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What Healthcare Can Learn From a 20 Year Old Hacker | 2 Minute Drill with Drex DeFord
Apr 3000:05:09Tap to summarizeMatthew Lane was 14 when he started probing the edges of online gaming systems. By 20, he had walked out of PowerSchool with data on nearly 70 million students and teachers using nothing but a contractor's stolen credentials he found on the dark web. Drex tells the full story and then lands the part that matters most for healthcare: Lane didn't exploit a sophisticated vulnerability. He used a username and password attached to someone who had legitimate access and simply walked through the front door. How many of your vendors have credentials that have never been audited? How many former contractors still have access? Is everyone using MFA on every system? The fundamentals are still the open book test, and too many organizations aren't passing it.Remember, Stay a Little Paranoid X: This Week Health LinkedIn: This Week Health Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer
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UnHack the Podcast: Children's Hospital Code Dark Plan with Laurie Campbell and Rick McIntosh
Apr 2800:33:44Tap to summarizeApril 28, 2026: When a hospital goes dark, the first 72 hours are everything. Laurie Campbell, Senior Manager of Clinical Ancillary Applications and Enterprise Imaging, and Rick McIntosh, VP and the Chief Technology Officer, at Children’s Hospital Colorado, break down the phased Code Dark response framework her team developed for ransomware attacks. They walk through real examples: how the supply chain keeps inventory moving without its systems, and how the radiology team built a sneakernet process to keep radiologists reading images even when the PACS environment is completely unreachable. This isn't theoretical. It's the result of years of workflow mapping, vendor co-development, and hard conversations across the entire organization.Key Points:03:12 Why Resilience Matters07:18 Launching Code Dark14:06 Workflow to Paper Playbooks19:15 Twilight Tech Workarounds27:03 Partners Lessons and WrapKeep up to date on the latest in health IT:https://thisweekhealth.com/news/X: This Week HealthLinkedIn: This Week HealthDonate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer
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Healthcare IT Is Drowning in Projects, Here’s Why | Newsday
Apr 2700:23:06Tap to summarizeApril 27, 2026: Drex DeFord and Bill Russell are back on Newsday, and fresh off the 229 Summit, they're not pulling punches. Healthcare IT has a demand problem. Too many projects, not enough capacity, and an industry that's chronically bad at saying no. From the 229 Summit's sharpest takeaways to the Salesforce headless CRM announcement, the vl.js hack, and why Bill thinks Claude Code's "genesis key" is about to change everything, this episode covers the stories that matter most right now. If your project list is longer than your resources, this one is for you.Key Points:00:32 Summit takeaway priorities06:41 Build vs buy with AI10:49 Personal AI assistants speed16:56 Headless CRM future UX18:26 Security hacks fundamentalsKeep up to date on the latest in health IT:https://thisweekhealth.com/news/X: This Week HealthLinkedIn: This Week HealthDonate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer
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The Most Likely Way Into Your Network Is Still the Door You Forgot to Lock | 2 Minute Drill
Apr 2400:04:34Tap to summarizeWhile the industry debates frontier AI models and nation-state threats, hospitals are still getting hit by ransomware through the same doors they've always left open. Drex zooms out to what's actually happening on the ground: massive patch cycles creating downstream operational pressure, countries reconsidering their software dependencies, and CISOs quietly doubling down on fundamentals. MFA, identity management, tested backups, network segmentation. The HICP documents are free, the roadmap already exists, and the data is clear. Most attacks don't start with advanced AI. They start with a stolen credential or a forgotten exposed system. The organizations most likely to survive what's coming are the ones executing the basics best right now.Remember, Stay a Little Paranoid X: This Week Health LinkedIn: This Week Health Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer
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Newsday: What Healthcare Gets Backwards - Building Better Care with Angel Mena
Apr 2000:25:34Tap to summarizeApril 20, 2026: What happens when you layer AI onto broken processes without fixing them first? Angel Mena, MD, CMO of Symplr, joins Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson on Newsday to answer that question with the kind of clinical candor only a practicing physician can bring. From ambient documentation to quality metrics to the credentialing chaos hiding inside every health system, this conversation exposes the gap between AI's promise and what healthcare leaders must do to close it before the opportunity slips away.Key Points:00:37 Clinicians and Tech Today07:44 Beyond the AI Hype14:49 Admin Burden Credentialing18:44 Governance Change and WrapKeep up to date on the latest in health IT:https://thisweekhealth.com/news/X: This Week HealthLinkedIn: This Week HealthDonate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer
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