#94 - Melanie Rieback // Co-founder & CEO at Radically Open Security

alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders

Cybersecurity for CTOs in 2024

Let’s hack cybersecurity in 2024 with Melanie Rieback, Co-founder & CEO of Radically Open Security, the world’s first not-for-profit cybersecurity consultancy with a focus on PenTesting🔏. Melanie is on a mission to fix cybersecurity consulting by putting people before profits and empowering internal teams “how to fish” 🎣. Tune in to hear about the current cybersecurity landscape from the person who not only authored a viral RFID paper (“Is Your Cat Infected with a Computer Virus?”), but also PenTested Tor, Homebrew and Greenpeace. Listen to find out:

• What is the business model💸 behind Post Growth Entrepreneurship (90% of profits go towards Open Internet Initiatives via NLNet)
• What to prioritise 🕵️‍♀️ in realistic internal IT policies (passwords, backups, updates..)
• Internal vs. External Security Teams
• Why she uses “Forgot My Password” as a “magic link” to access infrequent sites (and doesn’t remember the password on purpose) Listen here

BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Swarmia and codecentric

About Melanie Rieback:

Dr. Melanie Rieback is CEO/Co-founder of Radically Open Security (the world's first not-for-profit computer security company), and "Post Growth" startup incubator Nonprofit Ventures. She is also a former Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Free University of Amsterdam. She was named "Most Innovative IT Leader of the Netherlands" by CIO Magazine (TIM Award) in 2017, and one of the "9 Most Innovative Women in the European Union" (EU Women Innovators Prize) in 2019. She is also one of the 400 most successful women in the Netherlands by Viva Magazine (Viva400) in 2010 and 2017, and one of the fifty most inspiring women in tech (Inspiring Fifty Netherlands) in 2016, 2017, and 2019. Her company, Radically Open Security was named the 50th Most Innovative SME by the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (MKB Innovatie Top 100) in 2016.

TIMESTAMPS (approx) (00:00) Introduction to the Alphalist Podcast (02:13) What we will discuss today (03:12) What is the Business Model behind Radically Open Security (05:03) The Impact of Radically Open Security's Charitable Contributions (05:43) Where many cyber firms fail us. (09:13) How a Social Enterprise Works (10:15) Giving away 90% of profits? The Bookkeeping and cashflow behind it (13:27) Melanie's Nerd Journey: From human genome to RFD (17:18) Going viral with her RFD Thesis: Is your cat infected with a computer virus? (26:25) The Current State of Cybersecurity and Attack Vectors (26:55) Cybersecurity Challenges at Large Companies (29:18) Cyber Challenges at Smaller Organisations (30:54) Challenges of keeping software up to date at even multinational companies (31:10) Internal Politics and Cyber Policies (31:43) What challenges are fun to PenTest (35:39) Making the best of suboptimal stacks like Wordpress (37:12) Don't forget to back up (39:44) Getting Started: Securing a small team (41:25) Best Practices for Password Policy (42:39) The Future of Cybersecurity: New Approaches and Standards (44:15) 2FA on same device? (45:13) The Importance of Understanding Your Company's Attack Surface (45:35) External vs Internal Cyber Teams (48:52) Finding the right cyber company

Quotes:###

You don't know how to defend your company until you understand how to attack your company’” - Melanie Rieback, CEO/Co-founder of Radically Open Security,alphalist CTO podcast #94

About our sponsors

Swarmia

Swarmia is an engineering effectiveness platform for modern software organizations. Hundreds of data-driven companies from small startups to large enterprises use Swarmia to continuously improve across three key areas: business outcomes, developer productivity, and developer experience.

Swarmia connects with the tools your teams are already using: from source code hosting to your issue tracker and chat. With it, you'll stay on top of strategic initiatives, measure key engineering metrics (including DORA and SPACE), and drive continuous improvement in teams.

Learn more and start your free 14-day trial at link.alphalist.com/swarmia224.

codecentric

The codecentric Culture and Career Podcast is unique for a company podcast. It is just employees talking freely about their daily life - from IT consulting projects they are working to imposter syndrome. We support this because we think it's pretty cool that codecentric simply lets the colleagues talk about everything, no matter what it's about - project business, Imposter sydrome, further education or parental leave in the consulting business. For us it is definitely worth a recommendation. Listen in - the codecentric Culture and Career Podcast. Note - its in German. Just go to: www.link.alphalist.com/cc