Talos Takes
Every two weeks, host Amy Ciminnisi brings on a new guest from Talos or the broader Cisco Security world to break down a complicated security topic. We cover everything from breaking news to attacker trends and emerging threats.
Episodes
243 episodes
A 1-on-1 with Talos VP Matt Watchinski
He's been here since the beginning, and now he's ready to reflect on the past 10 years of Cisco Talos. Matt Watchinski, the Vice President of Talos for Cisco, joins Jon this week to talk about Talos' recently celebrated 10th birthday and talk a...
What should we be doing to better support open-source software?
People who maintain, create and update open-source software are the unsung heroes of the internet. Their work keeps much of our networks running on a daily basis, and the vast majority of them do it for free! While there are some security pitfa...
Threat actor trends and the most prevalent malware from the past quarter
Hazel Burton guest hosts this week to recap the top threats observed by Cisco Talos Incident Response (Talos IR) in the second quarter of 2024. She’s the...
You got a data breach notification. Now what?
Joe Marshall, Talos' resident ICS and IoT expert, and Pierre Cadieux from Talos Incident Response join Jon this week to discuss data breaches. Between Snowflake, AT&T, Ticketmaster and more, we should probably assume our data has been part ...
What we learned from studying the TTPs of the 14 most active ransomware groups
Fresh off an analysis of the 14 most active ransomware groups, James Nutland joins Jon this week to discuss his findings. They talk about the most common T...
Time to catch up on the wide-reaching Snowflake incident
Over 160 companies have been affected by a data breach at data storage company Snowflake, including Ticketmaster,
Everything we know about denial-of-service attacks in 2024
You may think a DDoS attack is so early aughts. But some of the largest attacks of this type have occurred in just the past few years. Talos recently updated our advice for how to best mitigate and prepare for this threat, so Aliza Johnson from...
The many shades of LilacSquid
Anna Bennett, one of Talos' threat hunters, joins the show this week to talk about one of her recent findings — the LilacSquid APT. This is a newly discovered threat actor that Talos ...
A mid-year checkin on Volt Typhoon
The Volt Typhoon threat actor is one of the longest-running cybersecurity storylines this year. The Chinese state-sponsored actor has already been accused of a range of...
How much has AI helped bad actors who spread disinformation?
Inspired by his quotes in a recent CNBC article, Jon Munshaw wanted to have Martin Lee on the show this week to discuss AI and how adversaries can use these tools to create deepfakes and disinformation. Martin shares why he thinks the threats o...
Recapping RSA
Nicole Hoffman, fresh off her trip to the RSA Conference, joins host Jon Munshaw this week to talk about her major takeaways from the week in San Francisco. Nicole talks about how most of the discussions on the floor centered around AI, and wha...
Why CoralRaider is looking to steal your login credentials
Joey Chen from Talos' Outreach team is here to tell us all about his research into the CoralRaider threat actor. He's helped write two posts on the recen...
4 takeaways from what Talos IR is seeing in the field
Hazel Burton steps in to host this week's episode as we cover the recent Cisco Talos Incident Response Quarterly Trends Report from the first quarter of this ye...
How to defend against brute force attacks
After a recent spike in brute force attempts targeting SSH and VPN services, we felt it was a go...
What are the dangers of enabling sideloading and third-party apps?
Apple now must allow users to be able to sideload apps onto their phones or access third-party app stores, thanks to
Why we need to stop calling as-a-service group takedowns "takedowns"
Hazel Burton and Thorsten Rosendahl join Jon Munshaw on this week's episode to discuss the problem with threat actor "hydras." They recently wrote about the topic for ...
Turla has been around for 20-plus years at this point, but they're still mixing things up
Holger Unterbrink of Talos Outreach joins the show this week to discuss his recent Turla APT research. This Russian state-sponsored actor has been around for years bu...
Why more actors are starting to use Telegram for their communications
Jon started noticing that Talos is finding more threat actors using Telegram nowadays for their communication and coordination, so he decided to bring Azim Khodjibaev on to ask him if he was just inventing this, or if it was a real trend. Turns...
Why no one should be relying on passive security in 2024
Nick Biasini joins Jon this week to talk about passive security. He recently wrote about this topic for the Talos blog and
What's new about GhostSec's ransomware-as-a-service model
Chetan Raghuprasad from the Talos Outreach team joins Talos Takes this week to talk to Jon about the GhostSec threat actor that he and a few colleagues wrote about for the Talos blog. GhostSec has teamed up with another ransomware group to carr...
Why are "identity attacks" on the rise?
Now more than ever, adversaries are logging in, not breaking in. They're stealing legitimate user credentials to hide undetected on a ta...
The tl;dr of NIS2
Gergana Karadzhova-Dangela and Thorsten Rosendahl, our resident experts on all things European Union cybersecurity law, join the show this week to talk about the impending NIS2 regulations. Don't worry, you've still got plenty of time to work o...
Case study: How Talos IR helped a healthcare tech company avoid a ransomware attack
Reposted from the Cisco Security Stories feed: Meet Jeremy Maxwell, CISO of Veradigm, a healthcare IT company. Jeremy discusses how his organization proactively prepares for cybersecurity incidents within a highly regulated industry.
How are attackers using malicious drivers in Windows to stay undetected?
Chris Neal from Talos Outreach joins the show today to talk about his research into the ways adversaries are using malicious drivers on Windows to spread malware. He recen...
(XL Edition): Talos IR recaps the top threats of Q4 2023
This week, we're bringing you the audio version of our recent Talos IR On Air video. Several Talos incident responders got together to recap the top threats and attacker trends of Q4 2023, as outlined in our full Quarterly Trends Report. Hear a...