Ep. 162 - Security Awareness Series - What Cows Can Teach You About Infosec with John Strand

The Social-Engineer Podcast

This month Chris Hadnagy and Ryan MacDougall are joined by John Strand from Black Hills Information Security. John has both consulted and taught hundreds of organizations in the areas of security, regulatory compliance, and penetration testing.  He is a coveted speaker and much-loved SANS teacher. John is a contributor to the industry-shaping Penetration Testing Execution Standard and 20 Critical Controls frameworks. He enjoys mountain biking, getting hurt mountain biking, sucking at surfing, and heavy music. January 17th 2022

00:00 – Intro

• Social-Engineer.com - http://www.social-engineer.com/
• Managed Voice Phishing - https://www.social-engineer.com/services/vishing-service/
• Managed Email Phishing - https://www.social-engineer.com/services/se-phishing-service/

• Adversarial Simulations - https://www.social-engineer.com/services/social-engineering-penetration-test/
• Social-Engineer channel on SLACK - https://social-engineering-hq.slack.com/ssb
• CLUTCH - http://www.pro-rock.com/
• innocentlivesfoundation.org - http://www.innocentlivesfoundation.org/
• Human Behavior Conference – https://humanbehaviorcon.com/

02:40 – John Strand Info

03:31 - ILF

04:51 - Ryan intro

06:30 – Chat about Chris getting his company started

08:21 - How did you get started with your own company?

12:17 - Cows

14:56 – The idea of travel and never seeing your family

15:57 - What was the point where you started to feel “this company is going to work”

18:35 – Creating company loyalty

22:06 - “Pay What You Can” training

30:22 – More on how the pandemic changed workflow

34:03 – More on pay-what-you-can training – management of 5,000 people

41:41 – How can someone take action right now?

44:59 – Favorite Books

• Dune
• All the Birds In The Sky – Charlie Jane Anders - https://amzn.to/3I9lu75
• We - Yevgeny Zamyatin - https://amzn.to/3Ihoy1b
• The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov - https://amzn.to/3Kl6t3R
• The Mistborn Series – Brandon Sanderson - https://amzn.to/33qcnQH

• The Way of The Kings – Brandon Sanderson - https://amzn.to/3tuF1uJ

47:55 – Who is your biggest mentor

• Ed Skoudis

51:34 – Guest Wrap-Up

52:30 - Outro