When Cybercrime Gets Personal
Easy Prey
Most security breaches don't begin with sophisticated code or elaborate technical exploits. They begin with a phone call, a convincing email, or someone at a help desk who just wanted to be helpful. The human layer is often the weakest link, and the criminals who understand that are the ones causing the most damage. My guest today is May Chen-Contino. She's the CEO of Unit 221B, a threat disruption company that delivers actionable intelligence to enterprises, law enforcement, and government agencies. Her background spans cybersecurity, fintech, and SaaS leadership at companies like PayPal and...
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Stopping Phone Scams
Easy Prey
Phone scams get dismissed as background noise or just annoying interruptions and unknown numbers with robotic voices we learn to ignore. But behind that noise is an industry built on psychology, automation, and staggering profitability. My guest today is Alex Quilici. He’s an engineer, entrepreneur, and the CEO of YouMail, a company focused on protecting consumers and businesses from unwanted and fraudulent calls. Alex has spent years analyzing how robocalls and scam campaigns are designed, how they evolve, and why they continue to work despite better technology and increased awareness. What...
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Stolen Identity - Stolen Peace
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Identity theft gets talked about a lot, but usually in the abstract: freeze your credit, watch your statements, don't click suspicious links. What doesn't get talked about nearly enough is what it actually feels like when someone isn't just using your card number, but is actively living as you. My guest today is Brooklyn Lyons. She's 25, recently married, and by her own admission, had no particular expertise in fraud or cybersecurity before October of 2024. That changed when her car window was smashed in a parking lot, and her work bag, laptop, wallet, driver's license, and everything...
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Inside Modern Fraud
Easy Prey
Fraud doesn’t always announce itself with obvious warning signs. Quite often, it shows up wrapped inside something that feels routine — a purchase you’ve made before, a link that looks legitimate, a message that arrives at just the wrong moment. Nothing feels suspicious, so your guard stays down. By the time questions start forming, the transaction is already done. My guest today is Iremar Brayner. He’s spent more than 15 years working in fraud prevention and risk management across payments, retail, ride-hailing, fintech, and digital marketplaces. In his role at G2A, he leads fraud...
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Money Laundering
Easy Prey
Organized crime is often imagined as something violent, chaotic, and obvious. But today, it looks far more polished than that. It operates like a multinational business, spread across borders, built on trust networks, specialization, and efficiency rather than brute force. This episode looks at how modern scams, fraud, and money laundering actually work and why they’re so hard to spot before serious damage is done. My guest is Geoff White, an investigative journalist who has spent decades covering organized crime, cybercrime, and financial fraud. His reporting has appeared on BBC News, Sky...
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Critical Infrastructure Risks
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Most cybersecurity conversations focus on stolen data, breached accounts, and attacks that live entirely on screens. This episode looks at a far more consequential threat: what happens when cyberattacks target the physical systems that keep society running. Power, water, transportation, and manufacturing. When those systems fail, the consequences aren’t just digital. They’re immediate, visible, and sometimes dangerous. My guest is Lesley Carhart, Technical Director of Incident Response at Dragos, a cybersecurity firm focused exclusively on protecting critical infrastructure. Lesley...
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Familial Identity Theft
Easy Prey
Identity theft is usually framed as an external threat. Hackers, data breaches, anonymous criminals operating somewhere far away. This episode looks at a much harder reality to face: identity theft that happens inside families, often quietly, over many years, and without immediate detection. The damage isn’t just financial. It reshapes trust, relationships, and a person’s sense of stability long before anyone realizes what’s happening. My guest is Axton Betz-Hamilton, an associate professor of financial counseling and planning whose research focuses on familial and child identity theft....
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Exploiting Trust (Part 2)
Easy Prey
Security failures rarely come from cutting-edge attacks or sophisticated tools. They happen in ordinary moments when someone holds a door, follows an instruction without questioning it, or finds a workaround that makes their day easier. Those small, human decisions are often the real entry points, and they tend to compound over time. This episode picks up the second half of our conversation on exploiting trust with FC Barker, a veteran ethical hacker and physical security expert known for legally breaking into banks, government buildings, and high-security facilities around the world. With...
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Exploiting Trust (Part 1)
Easy Prey
Most security failures don’t start with a dramatic breach or a mysterious hacker sitting in a dark room. They usually start quietly. Someone assumes a system is locked down. Someone trusts that a door shouldn’t open, or that a machine “just works,” or that no one would ever think to look there. Over time, those small assumptions stack up, and that’s where things tend to go wrong. Today’s guest is FC Barker, a renowned ethical hacker, social engineer, and global keynote speaker with more than three decades of experience legally breaking into organizations to expose their blind...
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Surviving a Ransomware Attack
Easy Prey
A ransomware attack doesn’t always announce itself with flashing warnings and locked screens. Sometimes it starts with a quiet system outage, a few unavailable servers, and a sinking realization days later that the threat actors were already inside. This conversation pulls back the curtain on what really happens when an organization believes it’s dealing with routine failures only to discover it’s facing a full-scale cyber extortion event. My guest today is Zachary Lewis, CIO and CISO for a Midwest university, a 40 Under 40 Business Leader, and a former Nonprofit CISO of the Year....
info_outlineCybercriminals are accelerating their attacks in ways that weren’t possible a few years ago. Artificial intelligence is giving them the ability to spin up phishing campaigns, voice clones, and deepfakes in minutes instead of days. As a result, the gap between what’s genuine and what’s fake is closing fast, making it harder for both individuals and organizations to defend themselves.
I’m thrilled to welcome Brett Winterford, Vice President of Okta Threat Intelligence. Brett has had a front row seat to these changes. His team analyzes identity-based attacks and delivers insights to help organizations adapt their defenses. Brett previously served as Okta’s Regional CISO for Asia-Pacific and Japan and started his career as a journalist covering information security before moving into leadership roles in banking, government, and technology.
In this episode, Brett explains how AI is reshaping the speed and scale of cybercrime, why trusted platforms like email, SMS, and collaboration tools are being targeted, and what practical steps can reduce risk. He highlights the growing importance of phishing-resistant authentication methods like passkeys, the need for clearer communication between service providers and users, and the role of collaboration across industries and law enforcement in pushing back against attackers.
Show Notes:
- [00:00] Brett Winterford introduces himself as Vice President of Okta Threat Intelligence and explains how identity-based threats are monitored.
- [02:00] He shares his career path from cybersecurity journalist to CISO roles and now to leading threat intelligence.
- [05:48] Brett compares phishing campaigns of a decade ago with today’s AI-driven ability to launch attacks in minutes.
- [08:00] He notes how reconnaissance and lure creation have become easier with artificial intelligence.
- [10:40] Brett describes the shift from banking malware to generic infostealers that sell stolen credentials.
- [12:30] He explains how cryptocurrency changed the targeting of attacks by offering higher payouts.
- [14:21] We learn about the Poison Seed campaign that used compromised bulk email accounts to spread phishing.
- [15:26] Brett highlights the rise of SMS and other trusted communication channels as phishing delivery methods.
- [16:04] He explains how attackers exploit platforms like Microsoft Teams and Slack to bypass traditional defenses.
- [18:30] Brett details a Slack-based campaign where attackers impersonated a CEO and smuggled phishing links.
- [22:41] He warns that generative AI has erased many of the old “red flags” that once signaled a scam.
- [23:01] Brett advises consumers to focus on top-level domains, official apps, and intent of requests to detect phishing.
- [26:06] He stresses why organizations should adopt passkeys, even though adoption can be challenging.
- [27:22] Brett points out that passkeys offer faster, more secure logins compared to traditional passwords.
- [28:31] He explains how attackers increasingly rely on SMS, WhatsApp, and social platforms instead of email.
- [31:00] Brett discusses voice cloning scams targeting both individuals and corporate staff.
- [32:30] He warns about deepfake video being used in fraud schemes, including North Korean IT worker scams.
- [34:59] Brett explains why traditional media-specific red flags are less useful and critical thinking is essential.
- [37:15] He emphasizes the need for service providers to create trusted communication channels for verification.
- [39:29] Brett talks about the difficulty of convincing users to reset credentials during real incidents.
- [41:00] He reflects on how attackers adapt quickly and why organizations must raise the cost of attacks.
- [44:18] Brett highlights the importance of cross-industry collaboration with groups like Interpol and Europol.
- [45:24] He directs listeners to Okta’s newsroom for resources on threat intelligence and recent campaigns.
- [47:00] Brett advises consumers to experiment with passkeys and use official apps to reduce risk.
- [48:00] He closes by stressing the importance of having a trusted, in-app channel for security communications.
Thanks for joining us on Easy Prey. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and leave a nice review.