Dr. Joni Johnston has spent her career looking at the dark side of human psychology. While much of her time has been spent studying evil personalities, her research shows why the rest of us fall for scams more often than we would like to believe. Joni is a private investigator, an author of books about criminal psychology, a contributor to Psychology Today, consultant to television crime programs. She evaluates inmates who are up for parole and is the author of a newsletter called The Mind Detective on substack. In this episode, Richard sits down with her to unpack the psychology of ..read more

85% of cyber incidents involve your employees (yes, even management and I.T. team members). Making just a few changes to the way you engage employees in cybersecurity can lead to a reduction in incidents. Your biggest payoff: faster notification of trouble.  CISO Todd Barnum leads an innovative team at one of the country’s best-known and innovative electronics companies, GoPro. This former Navy officer spent years experiencing the challenges of operating successful cybersecurity practices at Forrester, KPMG, Warner Brothers, Amgen. He is the author of “The Cybersecurity Manager’s Guide ..read more

Patrick Benoit is the Global Head of Cyber Governance, Risk, and Compliance...as well as the Business Information Security Officer for CBRE. He describes himself as a writer, speaker, mentor, advisor, and learner. CBRE, founded shortly after the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1905, is known globally as an innovative FORTUNE 500 company that serves most of corporate America. The initials stand for Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis. Today, CBRE is the largest real estate services company in the world.  Pat's job is immensely complicated, given the scope of a global real estate portfolio. Yet ..read more

Ralph Pasquariello was on his way to being an NFL player when an injury ended that career. He moved into shipping, working on the 98th floor of the World Trade Center, then to commercial printing, and eventually insurance, narrowing his focus on cyber insurance long before it was cool.  At the Atlanta-based firm Snellings Walters, Pasquariello advises organizations on covering their financial assets from cyber losses.  In Pasquariello's experience, many executives mistakenly believe their data and IP is of little value to hackers. Too often, CFOs are only interested in holding down ..read more

Welcome to “Smarter CISOs,” the cybersecurity podcast from Aware Force. My name is Richard Warner. I created Aware Force after 30 years in radio and television journalism, the last 20 years of it focused on cybersecurity. Our company’s experience engaging employees in cybersecurity will hopefully make these podcasts interesting and relevant to you. Our goal with “Smarter CISOs” is to introduce listeners to subject-matter experts in — not just cybersecurity — but also — how to effectively manage up to CEOs and the Board, how to engage the weakest link (that would be your workforce), and even pe ..read more