Full Metal Packet

About Full Metal Packet

Full Metal Packet is the go-to cybersecurity podcast for security leaders who want the truth about what it takes to defend at scale. Hosted by Yegor and Alex, the founders of Windscribe (trusted by 90M+ people) and Control D, this show pulls back the curtain on how operators actually handle breach incidents, reduce noise, and prepare for the post-AI security world. Season 1 features CISOs, DFIR commanders, and security architects from SaaS, healthcare, government, and hospitality. Each episode dives into: - Breach Incidents → the first 72 hours that define an outcome (de-identified and NDA-safe). - SecOps Therapy → the frictions nobody talks about: burnout, broken workflows, and the fixes that matter. - Security Futures → fresh perspectives on what’s underrated, overhyped, and coming next in a world reshaped by AI. No vendor fluff - just operator-grade conversations that security professionals can apply immediately.

Publisher

Control D

Category

business · news · technology

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

2 Oct 2025

Latest episode

23 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

18 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   23 Sept 2026

   Why Treating DNS as Network Plumbing Is a Security Decision You'll Regret | Andrew Wertkin | EP #17

   Andrew Wertkin is Chief Strategy Officer at BlueCat and has spent over a decade working with some of the world's largest enterprises on DNS, DHCP, and IP address management. BlueCat has been in the DDI business for 24 years, processing hundreds of billions of DNS queries a month across customers in finance, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and education. Andrew spends a significant amount of that time inside customer environments when things go wrong, which gives him a ground-level view of where enterprise security and network observability actually break down. EP #17 goes deep on DNS as a signal and control plane. Not the marketing version. The version where a spike in query traffic turns out to be a buggy MDM agent, where encrypted DNS quietly kills the visibility your security team depends on, and where a major outage call turns into nine teams trying to prove it was someone else's problem. Andrew doesn't pitch. He explains the tradeoffs, names the failure patterns, and makes the case for why most enterprises are sitting on more DNS intelligence than they know what to do with. What we cover in this EP: ◼ Why DNS is still criminally underused as a security control plane in most enterprises, even in 2026 ◼ The encrypted DNS tradeoff nobody talks about: DoH gives you privacy and costs you visibility, and why DoT is the more honest option for enterprise networks ◼ How BlueCat uses IPAM metadata to flip DNS from a blocklist to a behavioral allowlist based on what each device type should actually be querying ◼ The false alarm war stories: a hundredfold query spike that turned out to be a buggy MDM agent, and a UDP-to-TCP fallback that looked like a DDoS ◼ Why enterprise outage calls become blame games and what having DNS observability data does to the mean time to innocence (0:00) – Andrew's background and BlueCat's 24 years in DNS (02:14) – Why DNS is still the most overlooked security layer (04:51) – From service reliability to cyber observability (12:28) – On-prem vs cloud DNS: where each belongs (19:03) – Encrypted DNS lands: DoH, DoT, DoQ explained (23:34) – Why DoH hurts enterprise visibility more than it helps (29:57) – Zero trust models and what happens to DNS visibility (39:20) – The MDM bug that looked exactly like a DDoS (43:20) – SolarWinds customers and DNS forensics (45:50) – Device identification through DNS behavior (51:46) – DNS tunneling and the Indonesia carrier story (56:52) – Microsoft 365 and the DNS nobody updated (57:52) – Nine teams on a call, zero answers, one outage (1:02:07) – What Google Chrome quietly does to your DNS data Guest ⬇️ Andrew Wertkin (https://ca.linkedin.com/in/awertkin) Hosts ⬇️ Yegor Sak (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor-sak-725330b2/) & Alex Paguis (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-paguis-53a21815/) Powered by Control D (https://controld.com/)

2. 

   8 Sept 2026

   How Retained NetFlow Found a Five-Year APT Nobody Else Saw | Micah Czigan | EP #16

   Micah Czigan is Chief Information Security Officer at Georgetown University and formerly served as Director of Defensive Cyber Operations at Symantec, with prior roles across the Department of Defense and Department of Energy. He came to security through an unusual path: marine biology, commercial shipping, the Navy as a cryptographic communications specialist, and eventually the Pentagon running enterprise IT. EP #16 goes inside what real incident command looks like. Not the tabletop version. The version where a junior analyst freezes at 2am with a real alert, a third-party platform dies the week of finals, an Active Directory breach lands before the new CISO walks in, and a single TCP packet quietly exfiltrates sensitive data every few days for five years. Micah doesn't clean any of it up. He walks through what happened, what failed, and what no runbook covers when the facts don't match anything you trained for. What we cover in this EP: ◼ Why calm is an active leadership decision, not a personality trait ◼ The real cost of a delayed 2AM escalation on a genuine government alert ◼ When Canvas went down during finals week and security became business continuity ◼ One university device, no MFA, Active Directory already breached before Micah arrived ◼ How retained NetFlow at the DOE surfaced a five-year APT nobody else found (0:00) – Micah's path to CISO (04:56) – Leading incidents without answers (09:03) – Why tabletops alone aren't enough (11:21) – The first hour: what leaders miss (13:26) – The incident manager bridge (21:54) – Junior analyst froze, incident was real (25:37) – Building a culture of early escalation (31:15) – Should CISOs run incidents themselves? (37:53) – Canvas down during finals week (42:60) – SaaS-first with no failover (48:03) – The Georgetown Active Directory breach (50:14) – How abnormal traffic launched the investigation (54:03) – What Micah would do differently now (56:02) – Free cyber hygiene wins (57:43) – Hardware keys: who gets them first (1:04:53) – One TCP packet. Five years. Undetected. (1:09:41) – Why historical NetFlow changes everything (1:16:40) – Critical thinking over runbooks (1:25:52) – Final takeaway for security leaders Guest ⬇️ Micah Czigan (https://www.linkedin.com/in/micahczigan/) Hosts ⬇️ Yegor Sak (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor-sak-725330b2/) & Alex Paguis (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-paguis-53a21815/) (Co-founders at Control D (https://controld.com/)) Powered by Control D (https://controld.com/)

3. 

   26 Aug 2026

   Why Law Firms Are the Perfect Ransomware Target | Konrads Klints | EP #15

   Konrads Klints is CISO at Rajah & Tann Asia and formerly served as a senior incident response and red team consultant at KPMG. He spent years on the offensive side, running red team engagements against ATMs, mainframes, and telecoms infrastructure before crossing over to defense as the first full-time, dedicated CISO at a law firm in all of Asia. This episode covers how ransomware actually lands inside organizations that get hit, why law firms almost always pay, and what two incident response war stories reveal about the thing no playbook covers: knowing the right person at the right vendor before everything breaks. What we cover in this EP: ◼ Why the "don't pay" advice from governments is mostly political posturing, and what law enforcement privately tells victims instead ◼ How one senior budget decision made years before an attack determines whether you survive ransomware or get owned by it ◼ What a SonicWall on your perimeter actually signals about the 10 security decisions that followed it ◼ Why the vendor contact you need during an incident is never the one in your contract, and two recoveries that prove it ◼ How Konrads spent $1,000 in AI tokens to replace a niche vendor that told him security wasn't their problem (0:00) – First dedicated CISO at a law firm in Asia, period (05:00) – Why Southeast Asian law firms had no dedicated security function (08:33) – Bitcoin enabled ransomware; North American firms got hit first (13:42) – The Shook Lin & Bok breach: Akira, the file list, and a negotiation gone public (18:24) – Why law firms almost always pay and what happens to clients who find out (27:35) – 86% of Akira breaches tied to SonicWall: what cheap appliances really signal (32:15) – Where to spend a limited security budget (35:53) – Get cyber insured before anything else (47:37) – The Ireland incident: how an Xbox contact unblocked a Microsoft lockout (54:42) – The Scandinavian recovery: 50 engineers in 48 hours, one relationship (58:00) – How to vet vendor support before you actually need it (1:08:21) – AI in 2026: where it helps and where it falls short (1:11:32) – Replacing a niche vendor with $1,000 in AI tokens (1:14:07) – Vibe coding in enterprise: what's actually risky (1:22:23) – What Konrads misses about red teaming (1:28:35) – Hardware keys: highest ROI security move (1:31:44) – If law firms do one thing: get cyber insurance Guest ⬇️ Konrads Klints (https://sg.linkedin.com/in/konrads) Hosts ⬇️ Alex Paguis (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-paguis-53a21815/) & Yegor Sak (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor-sak-725330b2/) (Co-Founders of Control D) Powered by Control D (https://controld.com/)

4. 

   11 Aug 2026

   Full Internet Disconnect And Out Of Band Recovery In Hour 1 | Mohana "Mo" Balakrishnan | EP #14

   Mohana "Mo" Balakrishnan is CTO at Schools Insurance Authority and the former security architect at SonicWall. He started his career as a geophysicist in a tent in northern Canada at minus 60, pivoted to tech in London, and joined SonicWall at the bottom. Years later he was the architect at the keyboard when SonicWall's own systems were compromised through a zero day in its remote access product. He has also served as CISO at the University of the Pacific. This is the operator level reconstruction. The canary alert he waved off on a holiday, the decision to physically unplug the internet router, and the argument he made when everyone senior to him stayed quiet. What we cover in this EP: ◼ The canary alert that fired on a holiday, why he told the user to just close the laptop, and what it actually was ◼ Why the first move was cutting all internet access, and what that did to a fully remote workforce ◼ The out of band stack they stood up in hours. Separate domain, separate Jira, separate workspace, because corporate email was suspect. ◼ Rebuilding access one manual host to host firewall rule at a time instead of flipping the network back on ◼ Why the microsegmentation project nobody would fund became a no brainer the week after (00:00) – Meet Mo Balakrishnan: geophysicist turned security architect (05:12) – What execs get wrong in the first hour of an incident (07:09) – SonicWall's 2021 breach: take us back to that moment (08:08) – The canary alert that fired on a holiday (09:06) – "Just close the laptop": a zero day in their own product (10:31) – Backups saved them, the engineering lab didn't (15:46) – Shutting it all down and unplugging the internet router (19:02) – Hour 12: leadership wants the company back online (20:30) – The out of band stack: separate Jira, workspace, domain (21:30) – Rebuilding access one manual firewall rule at a time (25:47) – Killing outbound internet to cut their command and control (29:09) – The playbook they didn't have, cyber insurance, and the FBI (36:39) – A communications battle, not a technical one (49:31) – Closing thought: why the prompt is the new perimeter Guest ⬇️ Mohana "Mo" Balakrishnan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohana-b-24012016/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohana-b-24012016/) Hosts ⬇️ Yegor Sak: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor-sak-725330b2/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor-sak-725330b2/) Alex Paguis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-paguis-53a21815/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-paguis-53a21815/) Powered by Control D (https://controld.com/)

5. 

   29 Jul 2026

   Why Top Security Teams Deliberately Leave Vulnerabilities Unpatched | Paul Bleicher

   Paul Bleicher is Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Convo, building agentic vulnerability triage for security teams drowning in scanner noise. After a decade as an early employee across security and dev-tool startups, Paul and his co-founders spent two months interviewing 100+ security leaders before landing on the problem: most CVEs flagged by scanners are never actually exploitable. What we cover in this EP: ◼ Why 70-90% of vulnerabilities flagged by scanners are false positives, and how reachability vs. exploitability analysis separates real risk from noise ◼ How agentic AI systems investigate CVEs like a security analyst — building exploitability checklists, orchestrating deterministic tools, and guarding against prompt injection ◼ Why large enterprises' compliance processes can slow AI adoption at the exact moment attackers are moving faster than ever ◼ The audit/compliance angle: how AI-generated exploitability reports help satisfy regulators when vulnerabilities go unpatched ◼ Paul's advice to every security leader: use an LLM 5-10 times a day or risk falling behind entirely (00:00) – Meet Paul Bleicher, Co-Founder & CPO of Convo (00:56) – Why Paul started his own company after 12 years as an early employee (01:54) – The pivot: from ownership mapping to vulnerability triage (03:42) – Reachability vs. exploitability explained (08:21) – False positives on false positives: the limits of reachability (10:16) – The CVE arms race and thousands of vulnerabilities per day (13:29) – What “agentic” actually means vs. AI marketing buzzwords (15:22) – Prompt injection risk: securing an AI system that reads your codebase (19:13) – Noise vs. context: solving triage in the right order (20:11) – “Don’t worry about it, bro” — the reality of unfixed critical vulnerabilities (23:33) – Convo’s real numbers: how many alerts are actually exploitable (26:27) – AI writes the code, AI finds the bugs, AI has to fix them (28:45) – Startups vs. enterprises: who’s better equipped to survive? (33:21) – The gap between security leaders who use AI daily and those who don’t (37:09) – What to tell boardrooms still afraid of AI in 2026 (41:18) – What CISOs should stop doing today (42:17) – What CISOs should start doing tomorrow (44:41) – Closing thoughts and where this is all heading Guest ⬇️ Paul Bleicher: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulbleicher/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulbleicher/) Hosts ⬇️ Yegor Sak: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor-sak-725330b2/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor-sak-725330b2/) Alex Paguis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-paguis-53a21815/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-paguis-53a21815/) Powered by Control D (https://controld.com/)

6. 

   15 Jul 2026

   LockBit Hit Us: A CISO's Real-World RANSOMWARE BREACH STORY | Zach Lewis

   Zach Lewis, CIO and CISO at the University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis, breaks down the LockBit ransomware attack that hit his university in April 2023 and how it impacts CISOs and security leaders navigating the same threat today. ◼ Incident response takeaway: why the first 24 hours matter more than any tool in your stack ◼ Threat intelligence insight: how LockBit's negotiation tactics and "customer support" model actually work ◼ Real-world application: the backup failure that nearly ended recovery, and the policy violation that saved it ◼ Identity security lesson: how cached credentials let attackers escalate from one phished laptop to full domain control ◼ Post-incident rebuild: the break-glass accounts, data governance, and password manager overhaul that followed Zach walks through the full incident: discovering the ransom note on the hypervisor, the scramble to restore Active Directory on an esports gaming PC, refusing a $1.25M ransom demand, and the data governance and identity security overhaul that followed. (00:00) – Introducing Zach Lewis, University CISO (02:06) – Balancing CIO and CISO Roles (03:32) – Common Ransomware Misconceptions for Leaders (06:18) – Ransomware Industry Trends and Economics (07:44) – AI-Driven Phishing and Social Engineering (09:36) – Misdiagnosing a LockBit Cyberattack (10:30) – Ransom Note Found on Hypervisor (12:56) – First 24 Hours of Incident Response (15:20) – Impact on Students, Faculty, Systems (19:14) – Restoring Active Directory on Gaming Hardware (21:59) – LockBit Negotiation via Tor Network (24:50) – Backup Failures and Recovery Breakthrough (27:41) – Decision to Refuse Ransom Payment (34:20) – Root Cause: Phishing and Cached Credentials (41:38) – Why Only Partial Data Leaked (49:39) – Post-Incident Security Program Overhaul (1:04:45) – Final Advice for Security Leaders Guest ⬇️ Zach Lewis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacharylewis1/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacharylewis1/) Hosts ⬇️ Yegor Sak: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor-sak-725330b2/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor-sak-725330b2/) Alex Paguis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-paguis-53a21815/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-paguis-53a21815/) Powered by Control D (https://controld.com/)

7. 

   30 Jun 2026

   The Capital One Breach and the 1% Security Gap Nobody Fixed

   Ross Young was inside Capital One when the 2019 breach happened and he's breaking down what the headlines got wrong. From WAF misconfigurations to AI-powered attacks moving at machine speed, this episode is a tactical masterclass for security leaders who want to stop wasting budget and start building real defences. Ross Young is a former intelligence officer turned enterprise CISO. He was at Capital One during the 2019 breach, authored Cybersecurity's Dirty Secret: Why Most Budgets Go to Waste, and is now co-founder & CEO of Clear Capabilities, building AI agents to automate the parts of security that drain teams dry. In this episode, Ross explains: ◼ The exact WAF misconfiguration that enabled the Capital One breach and why it's probably still hiding in your environment ◼ Why your security tools are likely only 40–72% effective, and how to calculate your true effective protection score ◼ Which security categories are largely security theater (DLP, third-party risk management) and where budget should actually go ◼ How AI is shifting the speed of attacks vs. defenses and what defenders must do right now to keep up ◼ Why AI agents need kill switches, audit trails, and rollback processes before they ever go live Time Stamps (00:00) Introduction: Ross Young's Path From Offense to CISO (00:29) Inside the 2019 Capital One AWS Breach (07:14) Evidence Every CISO Should Collect After a Breach (08:26) The Swiss Cheese Firewall Problem (11:17) Misaligned Incentives Between Developers and Security (13:10) Risk Acceptance: The MRI Machine and the CFO's Math (17:55) Murder Boards: Killing Underperforming Security Tools (24:18) Why Vendor Choice Matters Less Than Configuration (28:32) Where Security Budgets Should Actually Go (32:39) AI Is Closing the Attacker-Defender Speed Gap (36:25) Stopping Deepfakes and Phishing With Process, Not Tools (43:51) AI Agents Are the New Phishing Target (47:37) Building a Kill Switch for Rogue AI Agents (51:51) Introducing the OWASP Threat and Safeguard Matrix (58:50) One Thing Every CISO Should Fix This Week (59:48) Ross's New Venture: Clear Capabilities Connect with Ross Young on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrrossyoung/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrrossyoung/) Hosts ⬇️ Yegor Sak: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor-sak-725330b2/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor-sak-725330b2/) Alex Paguis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-paguis-53a21815/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-paguis-53a21815/) Powered by Control D (https://controld.com/)

8. 

   16 Jun 2026

   Navy Officer Reveals the Threat Modeling Mindset Most Cybersecurity Teams Are Missing

   Ben Lipczynski is the Director of Security and Regulatory Services at Origina and a former British Royal Navy officer with 12 years operating nuclear submarines and global networks. He brings an operator-level perspective on what separates a contained incident from a months-long operational nightmare. In this episode, Ben breaks down why patching is not a silver bullet, why legacy systems are more defensible than most teams assume, and what the submarine service taught him about knowing your critical systems before an attacker finds them for you. He explains: ◼ Why siloed teams and poor system knowledge cause more breaches than sophisticated attacks ever do ◼ Why upgrading to the latest version often introduces more vulnerabilities than it removes ◼ How 700 scan findings came down to 20 real actions after proper contextual analysis ◼ Why the CVE volume problem is about to get significantly worse and what to do about it ◼ Why defense in depth, not patching, is the only strategy that holds up when an attacker gets inside Time Stamps: (0:00) Introduction (0:53) What corporate security teams get wrong vs. the military (2:22) The submarine mindset: 90% training, 10% operations (4:48) Operational clarity in the military: everyone knows the mission and their role (6:59) Military structure vs. corporate agility — opposites or the same need? (10:38) Why Ben left the Navy for cybersecurity (14:32) "Take a marching pace" — thinking before acting in incident response (18:09) The iPad water treatment plant story — OT connectivity creep in the real world (25:30) The myth of N-minus-one: legacy doesn't mean insecure (28:10) Open source dependency risk — 60% of vulnerabilities aren't in the core code (31:01) Slop squatting: attackers pre-registering AI-hallucinated package names (33:00) What to do when you can't patch — contextual risk-based defense in depth (36:26) The patch validation problem — exploits now arrive within hours of a CVE (44:00) Fully patched, still taken down — architecture beats updates (51:26) Log4J case study: why deleting the library beat the patch cycle (55:23) Practical advice for security teams managing legacy systems (1:02:22) The CVE volume crisis — is the current patching model even tenable? (1:07:21) Bold prediction: CVE text itself will become an attack vector for AI agents Connect with the speakers ⬇️: Ben Lipchinski: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benlipczynskisecurity/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/benlipczynskisecurity/) Yegor Sak: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor-sak-725330b2/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor-sak-725330b2/) Alex Paguis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-paguis-53a21815/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-paguis-53a21815/) Powered by Control D (https://controld.com/)

9. 

   28 May 2026

   ISO 27001 Expert: Why Compliance Doesn't Equal Security For CISOs

   John Verry is the Managing Director at CBIZ Cybersecurity, ISO 27001 certified lead auditor since 2006, and has guided hundreds of organizations through ISO 27001, SOC 2, CMMC, FedRAMP, and HITRUST. He has seen firsthand what separates organizations that get genuinely secure from those that just collect certifications. In this episode, John breaks down the gap between compliance and actual security, why shadow AI is already embedded in tools your team uses daily, and why agentic AI is the risk no CISO is truly prepared for yet. He explains: ◼ Why you can be fully compliant and completely insecure at the same time ◼ Why operationalizing your security program inside tools your team already uses matters more than buying another GRC platform ◼ How 65% of SaaS platforms now have AI built in and why most organizations have no inventory of it ◼ Why the EU AI Act's August 2026 deadline is real and what organizations need to do now ◼ Why agentic AI shifts the risk from hallucination to autonomous business decisions made at scale without a human in the loop Timestamps (00:00) Introduction (06:27) Meet John Verry: Managing Director at CBiz Cybersecurity (07:47) What compliance theater actually means and why it matters (09:34) Security is a journey, compliance is a destination (12:30) The most common mistakes companies make after getting certified (15:07) What it actually takes to operationalize a security program (17:34) The merchants of complexity problem and why less tooling wins (20:50) Third party risk management and the hidden operational debt of every new vendor (22:19) What shadow AI is and why most organizations still do not know they are using it (28:21) How to balance moving fast on AI with slow-moving compliance frameworks (31:40) Why ISO 27001 updates slowly and why that might actually be a good thing (36:41) How to risk model different types of AI from Grammarly to agentic systems (40:14) Why shadow AI is lower risk than deeply integrated AI but still dangerous (43:29) Sycophantic AI behavior, what causes it, and why it creates real danger (52:29) AI coding AI, the hard takeoff, and the model collapse problem (54:24) EU AI Act deadlines, ISO 42001, and why AI compliance urgency is now (58:44) How ISO 42001 works as an extension of ISO 27001 (01:01:27) When auditors do not understand AI governance and certifications become theater (01:02:28) The main blocker stopping CISOs from escaping compliance theater (01:05:41) The next 12 to 18 months: why the era of agentic AI is already here (01:07:48) Closing thoughts: What should actually scare every CISO right now Connect with John Verry on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jverry/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jverry/) Hosts ⬇️ Alex: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-paguis-53a21815/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-paguis-53a21815/) Yegor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor-sak-725330b2/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor-sak-725330b2/) Powered by Control D (https://controld.com/)

10. 

    12 May 2026

    EX-FBI Agent Breaks Down Breach Realities: Identity Is The New Malware

    Devon Ackerman is the Global Head of Digital Forensics and Incident Response at Cyber Reason and a former FBI Supervisory Special Agent focused on counterintelligence and cyber investigations. He is also the author of Diving In: An Incident Responder's Journey and one of the most experienced breach investigators working today. In this episode, Devon walks Alex and Yegor through exactly how modern intrusions unfold in the real world, from the first point of entry to full compromise, and what most organizations are still completely missing until the damage is done. He explains: ◼ Why attackers ditched malware and are stealing identities to hide inside normal user behavior ◼ How one phone call to a help desk bypassed MFA and gave full network access without a single alert ◼ Why phishing kits intercept your authentication token, not your password ◼ Why hardware keys stop most kill chains cold and where that still breaks down ◼ The four threat actor categories and why each one requires a different defensive response Time Stamps (00:00) Devon Ackerman Introduction (01:48) Why digital forensics and incident response belong together (04:28) How modern investigations have changed in the last 5 years (06:49) Are attackers moving faster than defenders? (08:41) Can digital forensics become proactive? (11:31) Will AI turn cyber defense into a war of bots? (14:50) Why security adoption still lags behind new threats (16:43) Identity becomes the primary attack surface (19:56) War story: help desk social engineering, password resets, and disabled MFA (22:52) A real vulnerability exploited within 12 hours (25:18) What happens when CVE-to-exploit timelines shrink to minutes (28:29) How adversary-in-the-middle MFA phishing works (33:16) Why MFA bypass is really about intercepting authentication (35:54) Hardware keys and where phishing kill chains usually stop (39:14) Hacktivists, nation-states, organized crime, and initial access brokers (42:47) The economics of selling access vs exploiting it yourself (46:56) Devon’s final advice for defenders: reduce blast radius Connect with the speakers ⬇️ Devon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devonackerman/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/devonackerman/) Yegor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor-sak-725330b2/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yegor-sak-725330b2/) Alex: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-paguis-53a21815/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-paguis-53a21815/) Powered by Control D (https://controld.com/)

11. 

    28 Apr 2026

    Cyberwarfare Is Not What CISOs Think: How to Protect Your Crown Jewels

    Matan Eli Matalon breaks down AI-driven cyberwarfare, Iran-linked threat intelligence, and what CISOs must protect when attackers are trying to cause disruption. This episode had to pause mid-recording after Matan, a former CISO who reverse-engineered Iran’s Handala malware, received a missile warning and had to take shelter. We picked the conversation back up the next day. Matan Eli Matalon breaks down what cyberwarfare actually looks like on the ground right now: why Iran-linked groups are winning with basic techniques and propaganda, how AI is giving attackers a speed advantage defenders can't match, and what CISOs need to stop doing if they want to protect what actually matters. He explains: Why groups like Handala choose quantity over sophistication and how that makes them harder to defend against How AI removes friction for attackers without changing the attacks themselves and why defenders can't keep up Why protecting everything equally is the fastest way to protect nothing The 3-step CISO framework: define failure, map every attack path to it, validate it's closed Timestamps: • (00:00) Intro - Cyberwar is already here • (03:00) Disruption over dollars • (06:45) The Handala playbook exposed • (08:07) Inside Handala’s malware • (10:29) AI didn’t make hackers smarter, it made them faster • (12:20) Anthropic’s leaked “Mythos” model • (13:48) Stop protecting everything, protect what can kill you • (18:00) AI is breaking your security perimeter from within • (22:20) The house analogy that changes how CISOs think • (34:25) The CISO isn’t the department of no • (46:45) Agentic AI is a black box and CISOs hate it • (51:05) Slop squatting: the attack no one’s talking about • (54:00) The Iranian hack that almost took everything down • (1:00:00) When the goal is deletion, not data theft • (1:03:18) The backup that wasn’t • (1:06:30) The 3-step framework every CISO needs • (1:08:25) Why this 28-year-old chose defense over offense • (1:10:50) Cybersecurity in 3 years: Matan’s prediction Connect with Matan Eli Matalon on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/matan-eli-matalon-413081186/) Powered by Control D (https://controld.com/)

12. 

    8 Apr 2026

    AI Is Rewriting Cybersecurity in 2026

    Matthew Rosenquist, longtime security strategist and former Intel CISO, gives his insights into why 2026 is unlike any year before it in cybersecurity, and what security leaders need to do right now to stay ahead. He explains: Why AI is a force multiplier for attackers first and what that means for defenders How the vulnerability discovery-to-exploit window has collapsed from months to hours The evolution of ransomware into AI-powered blackmail and extortion Why MCP servers are the next major attack surface nobody is talking about The CISO identity crisis and how to shift from cost center to business partner Shadow AI, prompt injection, and why privacy is on life support What the CISOs who survive AI disruption will do differently from those who don't Episode Timeline: (00:00) Intro and why 2026 hits different for cybersecurity (14:40) How Matthew builds his annual predictions across 4 domains (16:37) Why AI is the first force to dominate all four at once (18:53) Social engineering at scale: AI's first killer app for attackers (21:14) Zero days for $6 and the collapse of the exploit window (24:14) Why human inertia is still the defender's biggest enemy (33:54) Security by design and shrinking the zero day pool (43:39) When tools have agency: the blurring line between AI and humans (51:30) MCP servers, shadow AI and the governance gap no one is closing (58:00) A real world AI phishing attack that almost fooled a security expert (01:05:33) How ransomware is evolving into AI-powered blackmail (01:37:39) The CISO identity shift from cost center to competitive edge Connect with Matthew Rosenquist on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewrosenquist/) Powered by Control D (https://controld.com/)

13. 

    24 Mar 2026

    Incidents at Scale: What CISOs Get Wrong

    Randy Barr has held the CISO title at over 10 companies — including Cisco, Zoom, and BioRender — and has seen every version of how security programs succeed and fall apart. He now leads security at Sequence Security, focused on API security, bot management, and AI protection. In this episode, Randy takes us through what security teams think they're doing well but aren't, what incidents actually look like at scale, and why AI is rewriting the rules faster than most organizations can keep up. He explains: Why compliance and security are not the same thing — and confusing them is dangerous How insider threats often hide inside your own growth and broken processes What a war room actually needs to function under pressure Why MCP servers and prompt injection are the next wave of incidents no one is ready for How to build a CISO career that doesn't burn you out Episode Timeline: (00:00) From ASP to cloud to AI — how the security industry has shifted (07:33) Why 80% of internet traffic is now machine to machine (09:46) What most startups get wrong about security programs (15:01) How to make the business case for a security budget (19:36) When buying more tools is actually the wrong move (28:30) War story: stolen servers sold online by an infrastructure manager (36:25) War story part 2: third-party contractors scripting their own reimbursements (42:00) The website defacement that launched Randy's security career (46:11) What a good incident war room actually looks like (53:50) Shadow AI, MCP servers, and the prompt injection risk no one is tracking (01:02:00) Where AI can genuinely replace manual security work (01:12:43) Advice for new and experienced CISOs on what actually matters Connect with Randy on LinkedIn (https://www.notion.so/FMP-Episode-5-Randolph-2eaf9107c71980f783eff157ece962e0?pvs=21) Powered by Control D (https://controld.com/)

14. 

    10 Mar 2026

    Incident Response: EU vs. US Policy Gaps

    Alejandro Rivas Vazquez has spent nearly two decades running DFIR services and now advises on preparedness through his boutique consultancy, VeraBeam. He’s sat in boardrooms, testified as an expert witness, and been on the phone at 1am when OFAC changed the rules mid-ransomware negotiation. In this episode, Alejandro breaks down why the EU and US approach cyber incidents from fundamentally different starting points, and what happens when those worlds collide inside a real investigation. He explains: Why lawyers belong in the room (and exactly when they don't) How the EU's hyper-regulation actively hinders incident response Why business email compromise costs more than ransomware — and gets less attention What preparation actually means before an incident hits How DFIR is professionalizing, and where AI fits into its future Timestamps (00:00) Alejandro's path from Big Four IT risk to DFIR (07:45) How Operation Night Dragon changed the industry (16:20) Boardrooms, expert witnesses, and CISO liability (25:35) EU vs. US: regulation-first vs national security-first (32:15) When Europe's privacy laws block your own investigation (41:48) CISO personal liability: insurance, risk acceptance, and burnout (54:18) War story: business email compromise and the board member who went rogue (01:01:45) The single decision that separates contained from catastrophic (01:09:26) Midnight OFAC call during an active ransomware response (01:14:00) Why DFIR merged and where the profession is heading (01:20:09) AI as force multiplier: threat, opportunity, and the hallucination danger zone (01:33:53) Practical advice: what EU and North American CISOs should do this quarter Connect with Alejandro (https://www.linkedin.com/in/arivasvasquez/) on LinkedIn Powered by Control D (https://controld.com/)

15. 

    24 Feb 2026

    How CISOs Should Rationalize the Security Stack

    Ralph Chammah, Co-Founder & CEO of Blacklight AI, shares a builder’s perspective shaped by years in cybersecurity analytics—what breaks in real SOC environments, and what it takes to make detection actually usable at scale. In this episode, Ralph explains why “AI-first” security isn’t a label—it’s an operating model for reducing alert noise, improving context, and helping teams detect behavior that rule-based systems routinely miss. He explains: Why security stacks get noisy (and what “AI-first” should actually mean) How to cut through acronyms like XDR/MDR and evaluate real value How to use context + behavior patterns to catch insider risk and compromise Why privacy/trust decisions (local vs external processing) matter in AI security How replay/simulation helps validate detections and reduce false positives Episode Timeline: (01:46) Meet Ralph + what Blacklight AI does (06:45) Why he left the Big 4 to build a product (12:26) Tool overload, acronyms, and differentiation (XDR/MDR) (18:10) Why AI belongs in detection (and how to avoid bad signals) (21:44) Trust & privacy: where the data goes (and why) (23:16) “Battle scars” from SIEM life: parsers, missing fields, manual grind (29:32) Selective ingestion vs. “pipe everything” into the magic box (31:32) Validation: replaying history + simulation to prove detections (35:35) Biggest high-risk wins: insider threat + slow-burn intrusions (39:13) Jaguar Land Rover breach story + business impact (47:27) Quickest wins: what to connect first by maturity level (49:55) What tools he’d remove first (and why) (59:39) Platform vs point solutions: the real trade-off Connect with Ralph on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphchammah/) Powered by controld.com (http://controld.com)

16. 

    10 Feb 2026

    Black-Box Security Is Failing CISOs: Build Provable Security

    Maxime Lamothe-Brassard, Founder and CEO of LimaCharlie, brings a rare perspective shaped by government cyber operations, Big Tech, and building security platforms from first principles. In this episode, Maxime breaks down why modern security fails when it relies on black boxes, and what changes when you treat security like cloud infrastructure in an AI-driven world. He explains: Why “trust me bro” security models quietly fail CISOs How government cyber ops reshaped his view of threat modeling What provable security actually looks like in practice Why transparency beats vendor magic every time How AI should amplify SecOps teams, not replace them Episode Timeline: (00:00) From hacker curiosity to cybersecurity foundations (07:45) Lessons from government cyber operations (16:07) The shock of moving into private-sector security (25:35) Why most security platforms repeat the same mistakes (32:15) Provable security vs “trust me” security (41:40) Treating security like cloud infrastructure (49:50) AI’s real role in the future of SecOps (59:52) What CISOs should demand next from security vendors Connect with Maxime on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximelb/) Powered by Control D (https://controld.com/)

17. 

    28 Jan 2026

    “I Was the Breach”: Inside a $3M Ransomware Crisis Every CISO Should Study

    Matt Lee, now Senior Director of Security & Compliance at Pax8, reveals how a ransomware blast at his former MSP triggered a multi-million-dollar fallout, 26 client disruptions, and a complete redefinition of what security leadership really means in today’s world. Matt is a battle-tested cybersecurity leader known for translating complex technical crises into practical security transformation. In this raw, revealing episode, he opens up about the breach that changed everything - and how it helped shape the philosophy behind Secure by Demand. He explains: How a hidden ransomware infection derailed a multi-company merger What most MSPs get dangerously wrong about security risk The real cost of reactive security: layoffs, lawsuits, and insurance gaps What “Secure by Demand” really means (and why it’s missing from most strategies) Why security maturity is the new battleground (not just tooling) How to lead through cyber chaos without losing your sanity Episode Timeline: (00:00) Intro: Who is Matt Lee and why this episode matters (02:42) Matt’s origin story - from hacker kid to MSP tech (06:19) Falling into security: “I just added ‘and Security’ to my badge” (11:30) The merger that hid a ticking ransomware time bomb (17:04) Voldemort incident discovery: “We bought a company mid-breach” (20:47) The day it hit: Ransomware spreads to 26 client businesses (25:15) What went wrong: due diligence gaps, supply chain blindness (30:22) Incident response chaos and internal suspicion (36:48) Fallout: 18-month recovery, insurance battles, FBI involvement (41:35) Live Compromised: The philosophy Matt built from the wreckage (47:10) The birth of “Secure by Demand” - a challenge to the industry (53:01) Software design flaws: why vendors ship insecure defaults (56:20) Advice for CISOs and MSPs: mindset, tooling, and where to start (59:40) Real-world examples: empathy, leadership, and rebuilding trust (01:03:15) Final reflections: Why the industry needs hard conversations Connect With Matt on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cybermattlee/) Powered by Control D (https://controld.com/)

18. 

    2 Oct 2025

    Full Metal Packet: The Missing Conversations in Cybersecurity

    When a breach hits, the first 72 hours decide everything. But the stories, decisions, and philosophies behind those critical hours rarely make it into public conversation. That’s what Full Metal Packet is here to change. Hosted by Yegor and Alex - the founders of Control D (and before that, Windscribe, now trusted by 90M+ people) - this podcast is where operators, CISOs, and security leaders finally get candid. Season 1 brings you: Breach Incidents → Inside the calls leaders had to make under fire, anonymized and NDA-safe. SecOps Therapy → The frictions nobody talks about: burnout, workflows, and the daily grind of running security. Security Futures → What’s underrated, what’s overhyped, and how AI will reshape security in the years ahead. No blame. Just raw, operator-grade conversations from the people who’ve lived it. Guests already include CISOs from SaaS, healthcare, and hospitality — the voices shaping security today. If you’re a security leader, this is where your peers will be telling their stories. And if you’re listening, it’s where you’ll find the missing conversations you’ve been waiting for. Subscribe now and join us for Season 1 of Full Metal Packet.

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Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.