Automatically transcribed, so names and technical terms may be misspelled. The audio is the record.

The Colorado Equals Security podcast is your local source for regional security news, local events, and interviews with key individuals in the region. Now, here are your hosts, Robb Reck and Alex Wood.

Welcome to Colorado Equal Security. This is the newscast for episode 145 for the week of December 16th, 2019. Alex, The Simpsons has turned 30 years old this week. That makes me feel really old, Robb. Yeah, so, so the, the show— I don't know if you remember, the show actually was like a little clip that aired during the Tracey Ullman Show, right, back in the late '80s.

Yeah, but the first standalone episode of the sitcom was in— was December 17th, 1989. Wow, that is pretty incredible. I do remember we also— Matt Groening, who is the creator of The Simpsons, we had like a Matt Groening coffee table book that was before The Simpsons with the illustrations he made of the sort of similar characters that ended up becoming The Simpsons. Well, so where do you have that coffee table book? Where can I come see this?

I imagine it is still at my parents' house on the coffee table. Well, let's— we'll make a trip. Let's do this. Something for 2020. I gotta ride Ohio with you.

I love it. Moving into some housekeeping, we wanna remind you guys we have a Slack channel. It is a vibrant place to go get— have discussions with other folks in the Colorado community. Lots of good stuff this week. If you wanna join our Colorado Equal Security Slack channel, you just have to go out to colorado-security.com and find the link to join the Slack channel there and join the community out there.

Also on colorado-security.com is a signup for our mailing list. At the bottom of the page, you can put in your email, hit enter, it'll send us your email, add it to the list, and you will get the show notes delivered to you every week in your email without any effort by you. Awesome. And we would love it if you would tell a friend about the show. If you're interested in, if you're interested in really helping the show get bigger, if you want to help really spread the word.

Go tell a friend, tell a coworker about what we've been doing. We would love that. Another thing you can do if you're interested in supporting us is, is join our Patreon campaign. And I want to take just a minute to really thank those people who have been patrons for us this year. There's been a number of folks who have been supporting us really throughout the year.

And really, I got to tell you, it makes a difference. It makes Alex and I feel supported to know that there are people in the community who care enough about what we do to actually, you know, help pay the costs of what we're doing on the podcast. Yeah, that is great. Thanks to all of them. Also, if you're not already, we would love for you to subscribe to the podcast so that you get it delivered to you in your podcast player every week.

And while you're there, please make sure to rate the podcast. You know, we'd love it if we got a 5-star rating. That way people will know how good the podcast is and, you know, may stumble across it if they hadn't seen it before. All right. I think that's it for news.

Did I get that? I think so. All right. Moving into, into the news for the week, Colorado. So there's a survey that was just recently done around which are the best states for driving and which are the worst.

And unfortunately, it looks like in 2019, Colorado, we are the 6th worst state in the country. You know, Robb, I would not disagree with that. If you've ever been out on the Colorado highways, you can see some interesting things going on. So there's a few different criteria. First of all, we moved from previously we were number 15th worst in 2017 and 2018 down to 6th.

So it's a pretty big drop. The thing that we are worst at in Colorado is failure to obey violations, which are things like not wearing a seatbelt, running red lights, or driving without a valid driver's license. You know, maybe it's not that Colorado drivers are bad. Maybe we just have really good law enforcement, Robb, that catches people running red lights and not wearing seatbelts. I like looking on the positive side here.

We did come in 11th worst for speeding violations. So apparently we speed way too much. And unfortunately, kind of the That, that sounds pretty innocuous except for the next stat, which is, um, 210 of the 632, uh, fatalities last year involved speeding. Yes. Uh, don't speed, Robb.

Yeah. Drive the speed limit. Be safe out there. If you do wanna have better news, where's the, where's the better states to drive? So, uh, Minnesota, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Ohio, Robb, where I am from, are the nation's best states for driving.

Well, that must be why you're such a good driver then. Exactly. As evidenced by me having a perfect backing up job right into your garage.

Anyway, so be safe out there on the roads this holiday season. Next, there is a Denver startup that is turning oil well emissions into cryptocurrency millions. What a funny combination of things here that I don't know how much you've been out on oil. You know, you worked for QEP and I worked for Western Gas Resources. I've been out in natural gas fields, oil fields, and you'll see the, the excess burnoff that they do.

And apparently, that is a significant waste of energy and money, right? Yeah. So the, the off-gassing, you know, these are byproducts that come from, from oil drilling, that it is, you know, basically too, too expensive or, or too hard to take that and use, use it for something else. It's a byproduct. And so instead of just getting rid of that, burning it off, There's a startup that is convincing companies to take that and use it to generate energy so that they can run their crypto mining operations.

Yeah. Monetizing. Yeah. Pretty, pretty quickly. Right.

It's an excessive waste product. Right. You know, the, the oil companies don't want it. And, you know, this startup is monetizing it for good for them. Oh, it is.

It is good for them. And obviously, it's good for the environment as well. It's kind of an interesting combination of things. I'm interested to see what the long term looks like on this. I would imagine that if it's successful, then every gas company out there is just going to do it themselves, right?

Right. Let the startups do it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Just throw a couple of computers out there, mine some cryptocurrency.

All right. Moving along to our next story. This is a list from the Denver Business Journal of a bunch of companies that are expected to hire next year. And I think, Alex, you pointed out to me that it looks like this is probably kind of a recap of the year from projections that they had had from companies throughout the year who are going to be doing hiring in 2020. But there's a significant list of companies that are going to hire next year.

Yeah. The— some of the security companies on the list in the area, Carbon Black, CyberGRX, a lot of other big— Ping Identity, Ping Identity, Swimlane, a lot of big Bay Area companies that are here now. Amazon, Facebook.

Slack, you know, all kinds of great companies on here. Also some, some local smaller startups too. Ibotta, Healthgrades, Gusto. Yeah, there's a lot of companies that have committed to hiring next year, and, and if you're interested in seeing not only who is hiring in 2020 but who hired in 2019, what those numbers look like, these articles have a good rundown on that as well. You know who another company that's gonna be hiring is, Robb?

No, who's that? Salesforce. Salesforce. Yeah. So Salesforce plans to move more into Colorado and they're going to put their name on top of a big tower downtown.

Yeah. So it's the same building that Ballard Spar is in. If anyone went to that Ballard Spar security summit a couple of months ago, it is at what, 17th and Lawrence Larimer, that intersection there, some right next to— it's actually 2 blocks away from the Ping headquarters. So it's going to say Salesforce across the top. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Yeah. It sounds like they're gonna hire a few hundred people. They are already in Colorado. This will just be an expansion for them and some dedicated office space as well as the big sign on the building. Yeah, I love it.

I do love to see those tech companies realize that Denver is a pretty great place to grow out. We look forward to our new tech overlords. Absolutely. So next, there is news about a new global company that's making Denver its US headquarters. And it also received a new funding round.

So this is GTM Hub, which I had not heard of before, but they're about a 100-person shop that's building out Denver as their, their new headquarters. They really help companies manage OKRs, which are— it's kind of the, the Google way of talking about goals. Uh, objectives and key results is what OKR stands for, and it's the way you manage from the very top of the company down to individual contributors. How do we make sure we're all aligned on achieving the company's objectives? Yeah, and so they have 10 employees in Denver now, and they're planning to add about another 30 over the next 6 months.

So that could be another company that's on that list of people hiring in 2020. A lot of great places to get jobs right now. Don't let the global news scare you. Denver's kicking butt. Talking about some specific Denver companies, CallFire has been acquired.

So this is a little bit of a— I don't know, maybe not as big a deal, I guess, as it would seem, but You know, they were already owned by a couple private equity groups and then now they're being sold to another private equity group. So this is amazing news for some people who got paid out on Coalfire getting sold. It means probably very little or nothing to most of us. You know, I'm a company or a customer of Coalfire and, and I expect that this won't have much of an impact on us. It's just a way for them to, to move into a better support structure from a capital perspective.

Yeah. And I don't know a whole lot about the, the company that bought them, but I do know that they also own Sophos. Um, so my guess is that this is a, you know, a PE firm that is, you know, more focused on growing and, and running as opposed to where they were, where it was, uh, you know, earlier stage. Yep. Kind of good stuff.

Congratulations to the investors at Coalfire and looking forward to seeing what's next for them. Speaking of money, oh yeah, it looks like CyberGRX, one of, one of our own, our own sons here in Colorado from the security perspective, has raised another fund. They've raised $40 million in a series, in a Series D. Which looks like it's really going to be able to help them accelerate their sales growth and moving into both the UK and Australia markets. Yeah. So good stuff for CyberGRX.

I'm sure that they will be using some of that $40 million to hire more folks here in Denver. Also, it does say in this article that over the last 4 years while they've been here in Denver, they've grown from 10 employees to over 100. Wow. And so now, Robb, we move into the obligatory section of 2020 predictions. Oh, thank God.

It's been, it's been a whole year since we've got predictions. I'm excited about this. Yeah, it is very exciting to know what is gonna happen in the future. And we start off with number 1 on this year's list of predictions is coming from Ping Identity. Yes, Richard Byrd, who we've actually had on the show in the past.

He gave some predictions around what he sees coming. Number 1, America gets serious about data privacy. I think some of this is in regards to the CCPA going into effect, but really some of this— say, thinking that there will be a national data privacy standard, uh, that will get going in 2020. I don't think that'll happen. It depends on how the election goes, I think.

Yeah. If we can get focused on actually like legislation versus politics, it's possible. Number 2, privacy and security turn into competitive advantages. Um, again, it'd be amazing if that's true. That would, that's wishful thinking.

I'm not sure that that will happen. Uh, number 3, digital identity becomes standardized. I could say maybe moving in that direction, but I can say Ping's trying to push that way, and it makes sense that that's, you know, a way we have to look at things in the future going. Number 4, customers' and citizens' patience runs out. I sincerely doubt that one because especially customers seem to have an infinite amount of patience.

If security incidents have shown us anything, people are willing to put up with data being lost and other things like that. I don't think that's gonna run out this year. It's tough as a citizen. Like, you know, you're gonna try and vote people out of office over this. You know, it, it is just a tough situation as a citizen to even be able to do anything.

At least a customer can change companies. Yeah, that's true. And number 5, authentication takes on greater importance. Um, I, I'm not sure what the measure exactly of that would be, but, um, I think, yeah, I mean, authentication is, is becoming more and more important. So I, I can agree with that one.

So next we get to have a similar type of a post from LogRhythm. This is their 8 predictions for next year, and it's coming from their Labs organization. I don't know if James is a part of this or not, but I would guess probably so. Number 1, an insider will manipulate AI to wrongly put an innocent person in prison. I think that's, that's a little bit way out there.

It's a pretty big, it's a pretty big prediction. That's a pretty big, bold prediction. Yeah, I'm gonna say no. Number 2, the US election will definitely be hacked and influenced. That is an easy one.

Yes, there will be at least some minor level of hacking. And I think we already know that there's going to be influence. Influence is already happening, right? Yeah. But it is hard to say what does that mean exactly?

What is— are we saying that a result in the election, any result in any election, it has to be a national result? Like, right, what exactly is the prediction here. But interesting. Number 3, we'll see the consequences of increased adoption of biometrics. What will those consequences be, Alex?

Um, that, you know, we'll be, uh, cloned? I, I don't know. Um, the— I think that there will probably be continued use of biometrics. I don't know that I see the doom around it. Well, they're saying that it's going to be, you know, as biometrics are stolen, it'll be used repeatedly for fraud.

And I would always point out that I know that there's, there's this trope that, hey, I can change my password, but I can't change my fingerprint. The idea of biometrics is not that your fingerprint is secret. It's that a combination of the fact that a person actively has that fingerprint and it's attached to a living person authentically, that's what biometrics is supposed to prove. Yeah, your fingerprint doesn't have to be a secret for biometrics to work, just to be clear. All right.

Number 4. Iran's offensive cyber operations will grow at a faster rate than China's. I— okay, I can see that if we're talking about, you know, percentage of growth or something like that. Sure, sounds good. Quantum computing will break out of the lab and will see use by users and threat actors alike.

Nope, not even close. Not in 2020. Not in 2020. Yeah, I think that's a big ask. Number 6, deepfakes will become convenient scapegoats.

Uh, yeah, that's true. I think I can— can you just imagine if the Inside Hollywood interview from Trump had happened back when deepfakes were— or now when deepfakes were available, right? Like, absolutely, it would be denied, denied, denied there, right? Yep. Uh, ransomware is going to expand into critical infrastructure businesses.

Um, well, I think that, you know, it, it already has in some cases. You know, if you talk about NotPetya, But yeah, I mean, that seems like a reasonable prediction. It's a good way that that could turn. I like this last one here. Last one, eavesdropping on smart speakers will result in a major political scandal.

I think at this point, I'm gonna say no, only because I don't even think that we could have a major political scandal at this point, right? I mean, what else do you need to know from a smart speaker that, you know, you couldn't already see on Twitter, right? Right. It's all there. Right.

Anyway, but yes, I think that that is an interesting one thinking about eavesdropping from a smartphone. I do like the, you know, Richard from Ping and, and the LogRhythm Labs team took very different tacks on this. The LogRhythm ones are very specific and much more into the weeds. Those are kind of fun too. And our final news story of the week, this is the part 2 on measuring cybersecurity ROI from, from Optiv.

This second piece in the installment is looking at cost savings and decreasing M&A risk. So I will say that this entry in the series was pretty light. They do lay out a couple points, but there's not a whole lot of data talking about those points. Those 2 points were that effective cybersecurity means cost savings and that cybersecurity dramatically reduces M&A costs. So I think our ask is flesh this out some more.

Maybe, maybe re-release this blog post with some detail. I think this, it's a great idea. We just want to know more. Yep, exactly. All right.

That is it for news. Let's move over to the Slack Message of the Week. Big thank you to Andre Gaeta, who is of course our sponsor for the Slack Message of the Week. Each week we recognize one person in the Slack community who, who posts something either that starts a great conversation or noteworthy, and that person gets to pick one item from the Colorado Equal Security store. So this week's winner is Josh Gillum.

Josh posted that he finished his master's in cybersecurity at CU. So congratulations, Josh. As a graduation present, we would like to have Andre give Josh $25 worth of swag from the Colorado Equal Security store. That's awesome. It was— he posted that in the Good Stuff channel, which is kind of a place for us to just talk about cool things that are happening in our jobs or in our world.

And pretty awesome, Josh. Congratulations to you. Of the good stuff. All right, let's go ahead and move over to our calendar of events. As a reminder, we do have all kinds of events out there on our website.

You can go see in any given week all the things that are happening in the community. This month is pretty light as we're, you know, end of year's coming. We have one more event, I think, this year, but there's a ton of stuff already filled in in January and February and really throughout most of 2020. You can go take a look at what you should be doing next year as well. We also have a little bit of a one-off here in events.

Uh, we got an email from, uh, Joe Murdock, who, uh, is one of the cybersecurity professors at CU, talking about the fact that he is helping to, to organize the Women in Cybersecurity Conference, which is happening here in 2020 in March. Um, and he said that that is going well, but he was really hoping that he could get some Colorado companies, um, to help sponsor that conference. Um, they, they have some great sponsors, but also would love to have local companies as well. So if you want to reach out, you can go to wicy.org. That will take you to information on the conference.

Also, if you're just interested in the conference itself, it is March 12th through 14th at the Gaylord Rockies. That's fantastic. Yeah. All right. So the one event that we have here this month is SecureSet just organized a movie night.

On the 17th, they're gonna have a movie night at their at their Lodo location, and they're gonna be watching Hackers. Well, if you're gonna have a movie night, you have to watch Hackers, Robb. It's just the way it goes. I do enjoy Sneakers. Sneakers is a good one.

And War Games. Better than Hackers, to be totally honest. Angelina Jolie does not save this movie. But my my personal favorite is Swordfish, of course. Yeah, Swordfish.

There you go. Sounds like someone might like Halle Berry. That's What I think I'm hearing right now. All right. Well, that is the only event here throughout the rest of December.

We can talk about January next, next time. Yes. My 2020 prediction is that there will be a lot of events in 2020. Yeah, I love it. All right.

Let's jump over to jobs. First job on the list. We talked about this last week. It is still out there. Pulte Financial Services is looking for a chief information security officer.

So if you want to run the security program there, go check that one out. Western Union is hiring a director of cybersecurity and technology governance. RTD is looking for a manager of integrated security and technology. It's interesting, right? Yeah.

Curious what that is exactly. Empower Retirement is hiring a security relationship manager. Shutterstock is looking for a cloud security architect. Ibotta is hiring a security risk analyst. Slack is looking for a senior, senior security threat analyst.

Visa is hiring a senior cybersecurity engineer. Dish is looking for an information security business partner. And finally, American Medical Response is hiring a cybersecurity analyst. One, two, three. Wow.

Yeah, the count. Ah ah ah. All right. Well, that is it for the news this week, Alex. And this is one of those wonderful weeks where folks can can really be free because we do not have an interview for them to enjoy right now.

Yeah. So. That is it. We are recording next week. No, next week we're done.

We're taking off because next week we're off. Yep. Because we're taking off for traveling for the holidays. And then the following week we will have a wrap-up and looking forward episode. Sounds fantastic.

We appreciate all you guys out there. Once again, thanks to our patrons. And if you're interested in helping volunteer and do some interviews so there could be something in this spot, you know, give us a note. We'd be happy to have you get involved. Awesome.

All right, guys, have a great week. Thanks, Robb.

Learn more about the Colorado security scene at colorado-security.com, where you can see information about local security groups, a calendar of upcoming security events, and learn more about Colorado Equals Security. Reach out to Alex and Robb by emailing info@colorado-security.com.

Until next time, remember. Colorado equals security.