In this episode of the Cybersecurity Awesomeness Podcast, host Chris Steffen and co-host Ken Buckler are joined by Simon Pamplin, CTO of Certes AI, to demystify the urgent threat of quantum computing. The conversation pivots away from the "mythical" future of quantum and focuses on the pressing reality of "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later" attacks, where adversaries exfiltrate encrypted data today with the intent to monetize it once quantum-enabled decryption becomes viable.

Pamplin challenges the industry’s tendency to frame quantum risk solely as a network security issue, arguing instead that it is a critical business risk that carries profound legal and reputational consequences. The hosts and Pamplin explore the transition to lattice-based post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and the vital importance of robust key management. As the consensus on "Q-Day"—the point at which current encryption is rendered obsolete—accelerates toward the 2029–2030 timeframe, the episode serves as a vital call to action: prioritizing data-centric security hygiene is no longer optional for modern enterprises.

In this episode of the Cybersecurity Awesomeness Podcast, Chris Steffen and Ken Buckler explore a pressing security shift: adversaries are increasingly bypassing traditional credential theft to exploit the AI systems already embedded within corporate environments. The hosts discuss how "agentic" AI solutions often operate with overprivileged non-human identities, granting bots excessive access to data and infrastructure that far exceeds their functional requirements.

This resurgence of "standing access" for machine accounts—a vulnerability CISOs thought they had mitigated—is being exacerbated by the rapid, near-universal adoption of AI development tools. Using real-world examples, ranging from inadvertent AI-generated discounts to the complex liability of autonomous vehicles, Chris and Ken illustrate the risks of prompt injection and data poisoning. The episode serves as a critical call to action for security teams: to treat AI agents with the same rigorous identity management and just-in-time provisioning standards historically reserved for human users before these misconfigurations lead to massive data exfiltration.

In this episode of the Cybersecurity Awesomeness Podcast, hosts Chris Steffen and Ken Buckler explore the often-misunderstood world of mainframe computing. Despite the pervasive narrative that mainframes are "antiquated" technology, the hosts argue that they remain the gold standard for availability, integrity, and resilience in high-stakes environments like banking, healthcare, and government.

The discussion clears up common misconceptions, noting that modern mainframes are not just running legacy code like COBOL, but are fully capable of integrating with modern development tools and languages. Steffen and Buckler highlight that while the cloud offers flexibility, it lacks the sheer stability and performance consistency of the mainframe. For security professionals, the episode serves as a powerful reminder that "older" doesn't mean "insecure." In many cases, these systems provide a level of physical and logical isolation that modern, network-dependent architectures struggle to match. Ultimately, the hosts invite listeners to rethink the mainframe's role in the modern stack, proving it remains the undisputed champion of mission-critical compute.