Ep. 274 How Fortreum can help protect executives
Release Date: 09/15/2025
Ep. 299 Wipers, Rogue AI, and Resilience: How Federal Agencies Can Respond and Recover from Attacks in 2026
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
Everyone reading this has had minor delays at the airport. It is remarkable that more problems have not developed. Look at Chicago O’Hare International Airport—it has 857,392 takeoffs and landings in a year. Each one has passengers, and most have luggage. The opportunities for problems are overwhelming. Now add an increasing number of sensors and interlaced networks, and you have an attack surface of biblical proportions. All an adversary needs is one single point of vulnerability to attack a system. Think what could happen if an airport network were disabled by a ransomware attack. ...
info_outline
Ep. 298 Resilience by Design: Federal Cyber Predictions, AI-Driven Threats, and Immutable Backups with Rubrik
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
Technology is changing so fast that it is impossible to predict the next twelve days. Despite that, we have asked Travis Rosiek, Public Sector CTO at Rubrik, to gaze into his crystal ball and make some predictions for the next twelve months. The good news is that Rosiek sees a shift from intellectual property theft to disruptive attacks on critical infrastructure. The bad news is that Rosiek thinks attacks are increasing to the point that an event will light a fire under the current cybersecurity plans. During the interview, the concept of Zero Trust was unpacked. The idea is that federal...
info_outline
Ep. 297 Seeing the Invisible: Using AI to Detect Threats in Encrypted Federal Networks
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
It is always tricky to compare commercial networking challenges with those faced by federal leaders. For example, the military and intelligence agencies require traffic encryption. How can an organization detect threats while observing this traffic? Today, we discuss Vectra AI's network threat detection capabilities with Wes Nagel, DoD sales manager, and Gage Cowger, a security engineer. With technology from Vectra AI, network traffic can be analyzed for timing, size, direction, and protocol use. These can give behavioral patterns for network visibility without worrying about encryption. ...
info_outline
Ep. 296 Securing the Federal Software Supply Chain: Why SBOMs aren’t enough
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
One of the biggest trends in software development over the past 10 years is the shift from writing code to “assembling” code from off-the-shelf components. During today’s interview with Javed Hasan from Lineaje, we learned that 70% of that pre-assembled code is open source. In other words, an anonymous person in some countries modified software instructions. This casual approach may be fine for small businesses, but an organization like the federal government must be highly cautious. Hasan describes how his company was one of the first to work with the federal government to set...
info_outline
Ep. 295 AWS leadership
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
In the past 10 years, Amazon Web Services has gone from a niche player in the federal government to being responsible for billions in sales. One key aspect of this is how Amazon integrates leadership with innovation to address complex federal requirements. Today, we sit down with Andrew Christian to get an overview of concepts like customer obsession, working backwards, and the sixteen leadership principles that AWS implements to accomplish that drastic growth. ONE Customer-focus In the commercial marketplace, the concept of being “customer-focused” is certainly not breaking news....
info_outline
Ep. 294 From Defense to Offense: Proactive Strategies to Protect Federal Data
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
One famous cartoon featured two vultures sitting on a fence; one turned to the other and said, “I am sick of waiting, let’s kill something.” When it comes to preventing cyberattacks, the federal government is well known for a defensive approach. They have security systems, air gap systems, and even a zero-trust approach. This defensive approach is essential but may not give the federal government a complete view of how to protect data. Today, we sat down with Chris Jones, Nightwing's Chief Technical Officer. He outlines some of the characteristics of a concept called “offense...
info_outline
Ep. 293 Predictions for 2026 from Gitlab
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Today, we have an experienced tech veteran, Bob Stevens from GitLab, offering insights on how he sees the federal government overcoming three main technology challenges in 2026. Challenge ONE: Software improvement on scale. Stevens observed that everyone has seen AI's ability to review code. It has passed the basic phase, and now, in 2026, it cannot only review code but also identify security vulnerabilities, ensure compliance, and even generate documentation. This means that older,...
info_outline
Ep. 292 From Detection to Prevention: Using Technology to Reduce Fraud in Federal Programs
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
(We recorded this interview at Monk’s BBQ in lovely downtown Purcellville, VA) Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Defrauding the federal government is like the weather; everyone wants to complain, but nobody can do anything about it. For example, a joint DOL-SBA report from December 2024 revealed $2.3 billion in potentially fraudulent payments. Today, we sat down with Jeff Gallimore from Excella, where he will diagnose the problem of federal waste, fraud, and abuse. From there, he presents a solution that has already saved millions of...
info_outline
Ep. 291 Compliance Without the Bottleneck: Zero Trust in Federal Clouds
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? When cloud computing was introduced, it was quite a simple concept: leverage other people’s hardware to scale easily. Not too much to manage. However, today’s cloud world has metastasized. Today, federal leaders live in a world of on-prem, multiple clouds, private clouds, hybrid clouds, and even sovereign clouds. Complications arise when they are burdened with compliance requirements and staff reductions. Today, we sat down with Ryan McArthur from Zscaler to discuss how to effectively manage a cloud...
info_outline
Ep. 290 AI + Zero Trust: The New Line of Defense for Federal Data
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? We are at the point where AI is almost expected in any technology offering. Today, we sat down with John Kindervag from Illumio to learn how AI can be applied to the world of federal Zero Trust. Some have characterized today’s current cybersecurity situation as an arms race; some call it a whack-a-mole game. An innovative technology, such as AI, becomes popularized, and adversaries use it to improve attacks. As a result, the defenders of data must bolster their response, and they, in turn, use AI to...
info_outlineConnect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/
Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com
It is difficult to pinpoint an exact number, but some statistics show an executive is five times more likely to be attacked than a regular employee. It makes sense. If you receive a suspicious email from a fellow employee, do not respond. However, if you receive an email from the CEO, you are more likely to react more aggressively.
In today's interview, Richard Fleeman and Ricky Freeman from Fortreum Labs discussed the increased risk executives face, citing a 74% human error rate in breaches.
How do malicious actors get personal information on an executive? Sometimes, leaders are too active on social media and, for example, post when they are on vacation. If an employee gets fooled, he may transfer assets online.
Okay, we know ransomware is on the rise drastically, and companies are vulnerable – what can an executive do to prevent this activity?
Richard Fleeman observes that once the money is transferred, it is exceedingly difficult to find a resolution. He suggests that prevention is the best approach.
Start with social media and see if you are revealing your email or confidential information. Some call this oversharing. Multi Factor Authentication is a terrific way to limit access to your accounts.
People often use the same password. Humans tend to repeat passwords. "Password spraying" can be used to break into accounts.
Fortreum offers a service to help executives avoid these common pitfalls. They can start with publicly available data and then move onto the dark web.
Ricky Freeman notes that attacks like the OMB breach often result in data for sale on the dark web. He has developed tools that enable the scraping of the dark web to determine if an executive can compromise sensitive information.
Hard to expunge – easier to opt out Dark web. Even if your compromised information is extant on the dark web, you may not be able to do anything about it.
Fortreum's services include manual testing, attack surface analysis, and dark web scraping to identify vulnerabilities and provide recommendations.
You can get an idea of your vulnerability by taking advantage of guides to see if you are exposed.