The Human Element: Recent Episodes
Scott Gombar
Episode 25 I’m Tired -MFA Fatigue Introduction (3 mins): The host introduces MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) and the case of three individuals pleading guilty to cybercrimes using MFA fatigue attacks. The focus is on how attackers exploited human behavior rather than technology. Segment 1: The Recent Guilty Pleas – What Happened? (5 mins): Explains how MFA […]
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Episode 24 Now Hiring Welcome to the Human Element Podcast, where we dive into the stories and experiences that shape us in our everyday lives. Today, we’re talking about something we’ve all been through at some point—job seeking. Whether it’s your first gig out of college, a mid-career pivot, or just looking for something new, […]
The post Now Hiring first appeared on The Human Element.
The Rising Tide of Insider Threats: Are Companies Prepared? ep23 The Human Element Podcast episode 23, hosted by Scott Gombar, focuses on the rising tide of insider threats. Gombar discusses a report by Secura Nix revealing that 76% of organizations have seen increased insider threat activity over the past five years, but only 21% have […]
The post Episode 23: The Rising Tide of Insider Threats: Are Companies Prepared? first appeared on The Human Element.
Episode 22: The Unexpected Email Imagine receiving an email unexpectedly from yourself. You’d probably think that was pretty weird but you open it anyway and what you read next is even more shocking. Someone else has access to your email and they want a ransom in bitcoin to return your email to you, and to […]
Episode 21: Lost and Found – The Dark Side of Facebook Scams 3 Common Facebook Scams and How to Recognize Them Facebook scams are not new but they seem to be increasing, and becoming a little more sophisticated in some cases. We review 3 of the more popular scams being used on Facebook as of […]
July is Ransomware Awareness Month 10 Things You Need to Do to Avoid a Ransomware Attack/Data Breach Ransomware is the scourge of the internet, and one of the biggest threats to small businesses all over the world, but what can we do? Well, it starts with awareness and education. We recorded this podcast to raise […]
Episode 19: Fake LinkedIn Account Spotted As the owner of a LinkedIn group of almost 10,000 members, one of the tasks I have is to ensure the members are going to be good citizens. It is a geographically based group and as such I only allow members from Connecticut and the surrounding states into the […]
Episode 18: No, They Are Not Going to Pay Your Bill On the day of this recording, I received a phone call claiming to be from “TMobile/Sprint”. They wanted to advise of an overpayment on my account and that I was owed a credit. As I fumbled in an attempt to record the conversation and […]
Episode 17: A Hack Is Imminent I was made aware of a cybercriminal that has access to the network and computers of at least two businesses in the same industry as one of my clients. Some of the details were eerily similar but not all of the information matched. Not that it matters because we […]
Episode 16: Pretexting – What You Need to Know Social Engineering starts with research. You have to understand your target and have some information to continue to phase 2. Phase 2 is pretexting and that’s the topic for Episode 16. Pretexting is similar to building a rapport with someone. An attacker tries to build a […]
Episode 15: Is This Real? Deep Fakes & Impersonations You may have heard the news surrounding the cryptocurrency FTX. It’s not a good situation financially for a lot of people, and there may even be some criminal behavior around it. A few days ago, the founder went on Twitter with a video he recorded […]
Episode 14: The Trouble with Crypto Undoubtedly you’ve heard about all the trouble in the cryptocurrency world but that’s not what we are here to talk about. There are numerous scams around cryptocurrency, some we’ve talked about on this podcast including Pig Butchering. This one takes multiple methods of social engineering and combines them to […]
Episode 13: There are Bad Guys Among Us In the last episode, I teased that I would eventually record a podcast about an incident my own child experienced with a stranger in his text messages. Well, here it is. While playing a game on his phone he struck up a chat conversation with someone (common […]
Episode 12: Pig Butchering 101 I was planning to hold off on this for a little while. Then I started seeing others discussing it on social media. I purposely went along with a romance scam for the purposes of learning what the end goal was to share with the world. It was what is being […]
Ep 11: It’s Super Easy to Find Your Home Address and Cell Phone Number In this episode, we talk about just how quickly and easily someone can uncover your personal information such as your home address and cell phone number. This is certainly not newsworthy information as it has been possible to do this for […]
Ep 10: CISA Outlines Bad Practices Every Organization Should Avoid The RSA Convention 2022 wrapped up in early June. At the convention, the US-CISA outlined 3 bad practices businesses (and people) should avoid to prevent data breaches. The truth is these bad practices continue to be a problem for everyone despite the warnings and […]
How many times has a friend of yours posted on Facebook “My account has been hacked, don’t click on any messages from me”? A massive phishing campaign that utilized Facebook messenger was recently uncovered. This campaign served two purposes for the attackers. Serve ads to victims to earn money on ad clicks Compromise account credentials […]
Have you ever gone to Google to search for Microsoft Office to purchase and returned results that offer the entire Microsoft Office Suite for a one-time purchase of $30? Who could pass up that deal? Well, you should pass on that deal but some will not because it’s human nature to want to save money […]
It should come as no surprise that phishing attacks continue to increase in number. They’re also becoming more sophisticated utilizing multiple methods of phishing to improve their success rate. But why is phishing used so often? Who is doing the phishing? How do you prevent it? We will discuss this in this episode of the […]
A lot is made of adding MFA/2FA to everything you log in to. And you absolutely should do this. What isn’t discussed enough are ways to circumvent MFA. Most of the methods for bypassing 2FA/MFA are social engineering tactics. What’s even scarier is the methods used to bypass MFA are not that complicated. How are […]
Ep 5 – All Your Passwords Are Belong to Us A recent data breach of Nvidia revealed that employees were using really bad passwords like “nvidia” or “password“. Why do people continue to use weak passwords, and why are businesses not enforcing a stronger password policy? We discuss this in detail, as well as what […]
Ep 4: The High Cost of Convenience – Zelle Phishing Payment apps and digital wallets are fast and convenient. They are great tools to send and receive money to someone quickly. Apps like Venmo, Cash App, and Zelle make it possible to accept payments or send money to anyone else using the same app. Sounds […]
Ep 3: Ukraine Cyberwar is very real. Do you need to worry? Episode 3 became necessary after I was asked at least a dozen times how to prepare for the potential of a cyberattack resulting from the war in Ukraine. I wasn’t going to podcast about the war as it is already receiving a lot […]
Ep 2: Vishing Increases Phishing Success Rate by 3 Times Episode 2 reviews an article on InfoSecurity Magazine. Phishing was the number 1 threat vector in 2021 closely followed by vulnerabilities. For clarity, vulnerabilities are defined as software and hardware glitches the manufacturer has issued patches or updates for which the owner of the software […]
Ep 1: A New Twist on the Tech Support Scam In Episode 1 we talk about a data breach notification from Cox Communications in December of 2021. In the notification, they disclose someone was able to gain access to some of their internal tools, and as a result customer account information after using social engineering […]