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
Easy Prey
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_outlineRansomware isn’t a lone hacker in a hoodie. It’s an entire criminal industry complete with developers, brokers, and money launderers working together like a dark tech startup. And while these groups constantly evolve, so do the tools and partnerships aimed at stopping them before they strike.
My guest today is Cynthia Kaiser, former Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI’s Cyber Division and now the Head of the Ransomware Research Center at Halcyon. After two decades investigating global cyber threats and briefing top government leaders, she’s now focused on prevention and building collaborations across government and industry to disrupt ransomware actors at their source.
We talk about how ransomware groups operate, why paying a ransom rarely solves the problem, and what layered defense really means for organizations and individuals. Cynthia also shares how AI is reshaping both sides of the cyber arms race and why she believes hope, not fear, is the most powerful tool for defenders.
Show Notes:
- [01:04] Cynthia Kaiser had a 20-year FBI career and has now transitioned from investigation to prevention at Halcyon.
- [03:58] The true scale of cyber threats is far larger than most people realize, even within the government.
- [04:19] Nation-state and criminal activity now overlap, making attribution increasingly difficult.
- [06:45] Cynthia outlines how ransomware spreads through phishing, credential theft, and unpatched systems.
- [08:08] Ransomware is an ecosystem of specialists including developers, access brokers, money launderers, and infrastructure providers.
- [09:55] Discussion of how many ransomware groups exist and the estimated cost of attacks worldwide.
- [11:37] Ransom payments dropped in 2023, but total business recovery costs remain enormous.
- [12:24] Paying a ransom can mark a company as an easy target and doesn’t guarantee full decryption.
- [13:11] Example of a decryptor that failed completely and how Halcyon helped a victim recover.
- [14:35] The so-called “criminal code of ethics” among ransomware gangs has largely disappeared.
- [16:48] Hospitals continue to be targeted despite claims of moral restraint among attackers.
- [18:44] Prevention basics still matter including strong passwords, multi-factor authentication, and timely patching.
- [19:18] Cynthia explains the value of layered defense and incident-response practice drills.
- [21:22] Even individuals need cyber hygiene like unique passwords, MFA, and updated antivirus protection.
- [23:32] Deepfakes are becoming a major threat vector, blurring trust in voice and video communications.
- [25:17] Always verify using a separate communication channel when asked to send money or change payment info.
- [27:40] Real-world example: credential-stuffing attack against MLB highlights the need for two-factor authentication.
- [29:55] What to do once ransomware hits includes containment, external counsel, and calling trusted law-enforcement contacts.
- [32:44] Cynthia recounts being impersonated online and how she responded to protect others from fraud.
- [34:28] Many victims feel ashamed to report cybercrime, especially among older adults.
- [36:45] Scams often succeed because they align with real-life timing or emotional triggers.
- [38:32] Children and everyday users are also at risk from deceptive links and push-fatigue attacks.
- [39:26] Overview of Halcyon’s Ransomware Research Center and its educational, collaborative goals.
- [42:15] The importance of public-private partnerships in defending hospitals and critical infrastructure.
- [43:38] How AI-driven behavioral detection gives defenders a new advantage.
- [44:48] Cynthia shares optimism that technology can reduce ransomware’s impact.
- [45:43] Closing advice includes practicing backups, building layered defenses, and staying hopeful.
Thanks for joining us on Easy Prey. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and leave a nice review.