In our recent special Hot Ones-style episode of Detection at Scale, Panther CEO Will Lowe and Founder & CTO Jack Naglieri sit down to taste hot sauces and talk hot topics in the field of cybersecurity. Jack shares his evolution from security professionals to founders, emphasizing the importance of experience and understanding attacker profiles.

Jack also gives his insights on the foundational skills to becoming a detection engineer, including building detection engineering functions and having war room experience. He also discusses the evolving role of AI in the security field, such as its usefulness in generating code for detection programs.

Topics discussed:

• Jack’s transition from practitioner to company founder, emphasizing the importance of saying yes to opportunities and keeping an open mind.
• Building detection engineering functions with a focus on understanding what needs to be detected and why.
• The significance of measurement in detection engineering and the importance of a growth mindset for continuous improvement.
• The importance of understanding the experiences of security practitioners and software engineers.
• The role of war room experience in understanding attacker profiles and the importance of incident response strategies to prepare for a role as a detection engineer.
• The importance of sharing knowledge and experiences within the cybersecurity community.

Resources Mentioned: Jack Naglieri’s Substack

In a recent episode of the Detection at Scale podcast recorded at the RSA conference, Jack chats with Corey Quinn, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, an AWS cost-management agency. They talked about the intersection of security and billing in the context of AWS environments, highlighting the significance of observability through billing data to enhance security measures.

Corey also discussed key offenders in AWS services for security and highlighted the challenges companies face in determining optimal investments in security services. Throughout our discussion, Corey offers valuable takeaways on navigating the evolving landscape of AWS security practices and optimizing billing strategies for enhanced cloud security.

Topics discussed:

• The importance of observability via billing data to bolster AWS security measures and optimize investments in security services.
• How to identify key security offenders in AWS services to enhance cloud security practices and mitigate potential breaches.
• The challenges in determining optimal security investments within AWS environments.
• Detecting potential breaches through AWS billing insights and the significance of understanding billing intricacies for security enhancements.
• The impact of billing data on identifying security vulnerabilities and navigating the AWS security landscape with enhanced strategies.
• The role of services like Route 53 in bolstering security measures and considerations for AWS spending on security services.

Resources Mentioned:

• Corey Quinn on LinkedIn
• The Duckbill Group website

In this episode, Jack Naglieri speaks to Jeff Bollinger, Director of Incident Response and Detection Engineering at LinkedIn, who shares valuable insights on his journey in security, key technological shifts he's witnessed, and his approach to threat intelligence, incident response, and monitoring.

Jeff highlights the importance of contextual understanding in security operations and emphasized the critical role of human intuition, adaptability, and creativity in addressing security challenges. He also discussed the need for a balanced team with diverse skill sets and his views on the evolving role of AI in security operations.

Topics discussed:

• Technological shifts in the field of incident response and detection engineering, from the Y2K era to the present.
• The nuances of monitoring behaviors and moving towards higher-level monitoring: it’s useful but imperfect because humans can be unpredictable.
• Automation in security operations and how human analysts are still important and relevant because they have intuition that AI does not.
• Incorporating threat intelligence effectively in security programs: knowing what your scale is and what threats correspond to it.
• Building effective incident response programs and key considerations in security operations.

In this episode, Jack Naglieri speaks to Josh Liburdi, Staff Security Engineer at Brex. Josh explains the process of developing their new security data pipeline toolkit, Substation and how it has been working. He also discusses the importance of quality data, highlighting the impact of data transformation.

Josh also shares his insights on the value of human analysis in SecOps and modern incident response strategies, from handling alerts to understanding program gaps.

Topics discussed:

• The development process of Substation, a security data pipeline toolkit to enhance log collection and data quality for threat detection
• The importance of quality data in security operations and how sometimes it is helpful to collect it even if you don’t analyze it right away.
• The data transformation process and its impact on threat detection, as well as how it’s made the team at Brex more efficient.
• Enhancing the ability to write better rules after implementing Substation.
• Josh's advice for security practitioners: it’s ok to seek help and “soft skills” are important.

On this week's episode of the Detection at Scale podcast, Jack talks with Matthew Valites, Director of Threat Detection & Operational Strategy at SAP. They discuss which threat detection approach works the best, what metrics Matthew uses to gauge his programs, and why Matthew is a proponent of using detection as code.

Matthew also looks to the future and gives his prediction on what role technology such as GenAI will play in the security landscape. They close out their conversation with some actionable lessons from Matthew's book, Crafting the Infosec Playbook.

Topics discussed:

• Which threat-detection approach works the best (hint: it's usually the one that provides the most visibility).
• How Matthew manages the different logic in different environment using tailored macros.
• What metrics Matthew uses to gauge his programs and how he keeps track of those metrics.
• Why Matthew is a huge proponent of using detection as code, including the CIDC element it brings.
• What makes GenAI so exciting, and what its role might be in the future.
• How Matthew tries to take care of his team's mental and physical health.
• Actionable lessons from the book Matthew co-authored, “Crafting the Infosec Playbook”, such as espousing the values of a service-based approach.

On this week's episode of the Detection at Scale podcast, Jack talks with Justin Anderson, Security Engineering Manager, Detection & Response at Meta. They discuss how Meta has built its detection engineering program, how it treats detection-as-code like software, and how it gauges risk by assessing the TTPs applicable to the environment. They also talk about where AI is able to help out in development, the greater need for engineering and investigation skills, and three things to remember when building a security program.

Topics discussed:

• How Meta gauges risk by assessing the TTPs applicable to the environment and measuring coverage across those TTPs.
• How they built out their detection platform on a custom infrastructure and treat detection-as-code like software.
• Why they take a shift left approach to detection, starting with TTPs hypotheses and then eliminating as much noise as possible.
• How taking a page from the vulnerability management playbook helps reduce noise around detections.
• AI’s current limitations in detection and response, yet how it helps with writing code and speeding up development times.
• Why there's a greater need for stronger engineering and investigation skills, in addition to coding skills.
• Advice to security professionals to focus on understanding, identifying, and executing when building out their program.

On this week's episode of the Detection at Scale podcast, Jack talks with Charles Anderson, Director, Global SOC at Sony. They discuss better approaches to risk-based alerting that leverage metadata, how they fine tune detections across a global organization, and what factors to use when determining thresholds. They also talk about how to use Time to Detect to improve your strategies, how LLMs can help with baseline detection, and why it's key to not lose sight of risk in pursuit of threat.

Topics discussed:

• A better way to approach risk-based alerting by leveraging metadata to connect the dots.
• Which factors to consider when determining your thresholds for alerting.
• How Sony is using machine learning and why applying a single model to the entire organization doesn't work.
• Why organizations are targets of opportunity and accidental exposure more than they are of planned attack.
• The process Sony's SOC uses to fine tune their detections and how it has to be different across the globe.
• How to use Time to Detect to tell the story of what you're covering and what you're missing.
• Advice to other security professionals that includes not losing sight of risk in pursuit of threat.

On this week's episode of the Detection at Scale podcast, Jack talks with Jason Craig, Director - Threat Detection & Response at Remitly. They discuss the common TTPs of threat actors and how organizations can better protect against them by adopting hardware-backed authentication, a risk-based approach to logging, and building their threat modeling. They also talk about why organizations should move away from cellular MFA, the need for more behavioral profiling, and advice for security professionals.

Topics discussed:

• The common TTPs of threat actors and conglomerates like Lapsus$ and what organizations need to know to protect themselves against them.
• Why enterprises should rely on hardware-backed authentication rather than SMS MFA on cellular.
• How to take a better approach to identity management by using hardware-backed authentication and behavioral profiling that eliminates background noise.
• Why threat modeling begins with knowing what you do as an organization and what you have that's valuable to an attacker.
• How to take a risk-based approach to understanding which user data or sensitive information to protect first.
• Why an accurate asset inventory is a precursor to detection and response.
• Advice to security professionals and organizations on "knowing thyself" and codifying adversary tracking.