If a stranger walked into your workplace and asked you your name and email address, would you co-operate? What if they asked you to open a door for them, or to use your laptop or phone, all whilst wearing a shirt that said “CHALLENGE ME” on it?

In 2021, we published our first “Cost of Bots” report. 2021 was a time of flux, of lockdowns, furloughs, and home working. A lot of predictions were made as to how this would change cybersecurity. A year on from our cost of bots report, we wanted to know what has changed. Has remote working led to a new wave of bot attacks? Is there a better understanding of how these attacks work? Are businesses fighting back, or losing the war?

In a recent Netacea report, 60% of businesses reported a minor financial impact caused by bots skewing their analytics, and with the busiest eCommerce period of the year fast approaching, businesses need to fight back. How do bots affect businesses’ data, marketing campaigns and paid media planning? Host and Principal Security Researcher Cyril Noel-Tagoe is joined by Spike’s Head of Paid Media Matt Wilkinson to discuss the effect bots will have on marketing analytics this Black Friday and how to keep your enterprise’s analytics safe from automated threats during periods of peak traffic.

Illicit forums and dark web marketplaces are so closely guarded that it’s almost impossible to know how many stolen user accounts, digital assets, or data leaks are exposed, let alone who is responsible. But the more we can uncover, the better we can defend against attacks and hold threat actors accountable.

Bonus episode: Cybersecurity Sessions host Cyril Noel-Tagoe was recently featured on the Mimecast podcast series Phishy Business. Cyril joined hosts Alice Jeffery and Brian Pinnock, plus fellow guest, Mimecast Senior Product Manager Dr Kiri Addison, for a fascinating conversation about bots and what they are used for (both good and bad). About Phishy Business

Cyber-criminals are relentless, and the number of attacks is growing. Businesses are increasingly turning to ethical hackers to find bugs and exploits before attackers do, offering financial incentives for their efforts. As a security researcher, our host Cyril Noel-Tagoe is always on the hunt for new vulnerabilities. He’s joined for this episode by ethical hacking enthusiast and Daily Swig reporter Jessica Haworth, who has a finger firmly on the pulse of the latest bug bounty programs and developments.

Mentoring is essential to closing the cybersecurity skills gap, especially in realizing the potential of people from underrepresented communities. In recent years many newcomers to cyber have been mentored by Gabrielle Botbol. Since teaching herself how to be a pentester, she has become recognized as one of Canada’s top 20 women in cybersecurity. Andy Still finds out how Gabrielle entered the world of cybersecurity after leaving another vocation, and how she is helping the next generation of women and underrepresented communities follow her ‘six steps to becoming a pentester’.

Many businesses argue that they need to collect information about customers to verify who they are and secure their accounts. However, this is at odds with online privacy advocates, who say organizations are compromising our security by collecting far too much information about us. In this episode, Netacea co-founder Andy Still talks to @ZDNet cybersecurity journalist Charlie Osborne about the intrinsic link between security and privacy, how legislation like the GDPR has strengthened both, and where responsibility lies for protecting our privacy online.

We’re told that multi-factor authentication is more secure than passwords, but in truth most MFA is susceptible to the same old threats, such as phishing and man-in-the-middle attacks. In fact, the widely championed advice to “use MFA, any MFA” could lead to a false sense of security and even more data breaches. In this episode, Andy sits down with Roger Grimes (Data-Driven Defense Evangelist, KnowBe4) to find out why MFA is vulnerable to exploitation, whether some MFAs are better than others, and what the future of secure authentication might look like.

It’s likely that we encounter artificial intelligence more often than we realize. Just as AI can be used to facilitate fraud and spread misinformation via deepfakes and sophisticated identity theft, it can also be used to develop algorithms that detect cyber-attacks in the blink of an eye. In this episode of the Cybersecurity Sessions, Andy is joined by Elaine Lee (Data Scientist, Mimecast) to delve into the benefits and risks of AI in cybersecurity, examining how artificial intelligence can be used both as an offensive weapon by adversaries and by security teams to defend against attacks.