What if the tools protecting your organization were the ones compromising it? In this episode of The Audit, co-hosts Joshua Schmidt, Eric Brown, and Nick Mellem — joined by IT Audit Labs team member Samuel Cala live in the St. Paul studio — unpack a wave of cybersecurity stories that all converge on one unsettling theme: trust is being exploited at every layer of the stack.

From an Iranian-linked APT group targeting U.S. healthcare infrastructure, to a sophisticated GitHub Actions supply chain attack that backdoored an AI coding library used by thousands of developers — the crew breaks down exactly how threat actors are weaponizing the tools, platforms, and third-party services organizations depend on daily.

They also dive into a disturbing revelation about AI-powered audit certifications: one company allegedly fabricated compliance evidence to hand out ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certifications at a fraction of the cost — raising serious questions about what those credentials are actually worth.

In this episode:

• 🇮🇷 Iran's escalation from cyber espionage to active disruption — what signals to watch for
• 🔗 The GitHub Actions / LiteLLM supply chain attack explained step by step
• 🧾 How an AI certification firm allegedly faked audit evidence — and what it means for your vendor trust
• 📡 FCC bans on foreign-made routers and the gray market hardware problem hiding in plain sight
• 🤖 OpenAI kills Sora — what it signals about where AI is actually headed

Whether you're a CISO trying to defend against nation-state threats or a developer trusting open-source libraries, this episode delivers the context — and the hard questions — you need to stay ahead.

Don't wait until your organization is the next headline. IT leaders need to stay ahead of evolving threats, and this episode delivers critical insights to help protect your business. Like, share, and subscribe for more in-depth security discussions!

#cybersecurity #supplychainattack #infosec #threatintelligence #ISO27001 #SOC2 #githubsecurity #irancyberattack #aicybersecurity #itauditlabs

A $25 million wire transfer. A fake CFO. An entire executive team that didn't exist. This is what modern cybercrime looks like — and your firewall won't stop it.

In this episode of The Audit, co-hosts Joshua Schmidt, Eric Brown, and Nick Mellum sit down with James McDowell — forensic psychology expert, cybercrime researcher, and adjunct professor at American Military University — to explore the chilling intersection of AI, human psychology, and cybercrime. James introduces the concept of "cognitive surrender": the slow, dangerous transfer of our thinking to AI tools, and how threat actors are exploiting it at scale.

What You'll Learn:

• What "cognitive surrender" is and why it's cybercrime's greatest accelerant
• How a $25M deepfake scam bypassed every red flag a trained employee had
• The psychology behind System 1 vs. System 2 thinking — and why attackers time their strikes around your lunch break
• Why voice passwords and family code phrases are becoming critical security tools
• How FraudGPT and dark-web AI models are lowering the barrier for cybercriminals
• What James's wave theory reveals about how we trust — and how that trust gets exploited

📖 Guest: James McDowell Forensic psychologist, cybercrime researcher, and author of Forensic Psychology and the Human Side of Cybercrime. James teaches at American Military University and leads research at [Research Institute] focused on the psychology of cyber offenders and victims.

📚 Book available on Amazon and Routledge. Search: Forensic Psychology and the Human Side of Cybercrime

Don't wait until your organization is the next headline. IT leaders need to stay ahead of evolving threats, and this episode delivers the psychological intelligence to help protect your business. Like, share, and subscribe for more in-depth security discussions!

#cybersecurity #cybercrime #socialengineering #deepfake #AIthreats #infosec #phishing #cyberpsychology #ethicalhacking #CISO

What if the device keeping you alive was also a cybersecurity vulnerability? That's not a hypothetical — it's Victor Barge's reality.

In this episode of The Audit, IT Audit Labs' Global Delivery Director Victor Barge shares the story of his sudden cardiac event and the life-saving defibrillator now implanted in his chest and the eye-opening security questions that followed. Co-hosts Joshua Schmidt, Eric Brown, and Nick Mellum connect Victor's story to the real-world cyber risks organizations ignore every single day.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• How modern pacemakers and defibrillators transmit biometric data 24/7 — and what happens if that data is compromised
• Why the 2017 Abbott pacemaker recall of 500,000 devices is a warning the industry hasn't fully heeded
• The parallel between reactive healthcare and reactive cybersecurity — and why waiting costs you more
• Why billion-dollar organizations are still storing passwords in spreadsheets in 2026
• What continuous monitoring in IT security can learn from real-time cardiac telemetry

Whether you're a CISO, IT auditor, or just someone wearing a smartwatch, this episode will make you rethink what "sensitive data" really means.