In this episode of 'Adopting Zero Trust (AZT)', host Neal Dennis and producer Elliot Volkman delve into the often-overlooked realm of soft or 'non-tech' skills in cybersecurity.

This week, we chat with Courtney Hans, VP of Cyber Services at AmTrust Financial Services, and Evgeniy Kharam, author of Architecting Success: The Art of Soft Skills, who help us explore how non-technical skills are vital in shaping the careers of cybersecurity professionals.

Our guests share the importance of effective communication, emotional intelligence, and adaptability. The hosts and guests share personal anecdotes, training tips, and the necessity of bridging technical prowess with essential soft skills to improve stakeholder engagement and career advancement. The episode emphasizes the value of being comfortable with discomfort and soliciting feedback to enhance one’s professional journey in cybersecurity.

Season 3, Episode 15: We gather a panel of journalists, communications, and a researcher to discuss how cybersecurity news and incidents are reported.

You can read the show notes here.

In the world of cybersecurity journalism, you can broadly divide it into four competing forces: reporters, communications teams, researchers, and readers. Each requires the other to accomplish its goals, but they all have very different priorities and goals.

• Journalists have a duty to inform the public about security-related events.
• Communication teams have a duty to inform the public about related incidents and research, but in a controlled setting.
• Researchers help provide answers to communication teams and journalists.
• Readers want to be informed of information that impact them, and their habits shape what kind of reporting is invested in the most.

This week we explore some of these dynamics by bringing together a panel representing comms, journalism, and research to discuss the game of tug-of-war during incident response and incident reporting.

Danny Palmer was a long-standing cybersecurity reporter at ZDNet prior to recently joining DarkTrace, Josh Swarz is the Senior Communications Manager at Microsoft focusing on threat intelligence, our host Neal Dennis is former NSA and has lived many lives around either keeping secrets or uncovering them, and producer Elliot Volkman has been a reporter for two decades and works with Josh on elevating research at Microsoft Threat Intelligence.

In our final preview episode of GRC Uncensored, we explore a particularly bipolar debate: do you need a GRC tool to manage compliance, or will spreadsheets suffice?

After this, we will be back to our regularly produced AZT episodes. The last episodes of our pilot for GRC Uncensored can be found on your favorite podcast app or newsletter on Substack.