Videocasts

News alert: RSAC 2025 ramps up – watch Byron Acohido on Bospar’s Politely Pushy podcast

By Byron V. Acohido

The annual pilgrimage to San Francisco for RSA Conference is fast approaching—and the ramp-up has officially begun.

In the latest episode of Bospar’s Politely Pushy podcast, Last Watchdog Editor-in-Chief Byron V. Acohido joins DigiCert’s Christina Knittel and ConnectSafely.org’s Larry Magid for a spirited roundtable on how to get the most out of RSAC 2025.

Hosted by veteran broadcaster Eric Chemi, the panel explores the real ROI of attending RSA—from brand exposure and relationship-building to making sure you’re not just another face in the crowd. Expect candid takes, war stories, and practical strategies from three seasoned pros who know how to maximize impact amid the chaos of Moscone Center.

This conversation kicks off Last Watchdog’s pre-show coverage of RSAC 2025. Stay tuned for the return of our acclaimed RSAC Fireside Chat podcast series—offering insightful one-on-one conversations with leading cybersecurity executives. First episodes go live the week of April 21.

For 20 years, Last Watchdog has brought context, clarity, and analysis to one of the world’s most influential cybersecurity conferences. This year promises to be one of the most pivotal yet.

Follow along as the road to RSAC 2025 continues.

Acohido

Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Byron V. Acohido is dedicated to fostering public awareness about how to make the Internet as private and secure as it ought to be.

MY TAKE: Securing the Internet of Everything: why self-healing devices are the next frontier

By Byron V. Acohido

We’re just getting started down the road to the Internet of Everything (IoE.)

Related: IoT growing at a 24% clip

To get there – to fully tap the potential of a hyper-interconnected ecosystem where devices, data, AI and humans converge to benefit humankind – cybersecurity must first catch up.

I had an edifying conversation about this with Steve Hanna, distinguished engineer at Infineon Technologies, a global semiconductor leader in power systems and IoT, based in Neubiberg, Germany.

We went over how Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) is gaining steam — and how it embodies a critical paradigm shift necessary to secure hyper-interconnected services.

Not coincidentally, industry standards groups and government regulators have stepped forward to embrace a vital supporting role. Respectively, they’ve begun shaping and implementing new technical protocols and best practices, backed by a fresh slate of audit requirements, to raise the bar of security to where it needs to be.

MY TAKE: Technology breakthroughs, emerging standards are coalescing to assure IoT integrity

By Byron V. Acohido

The Internet of Things is growing apace.

Related: The Top 12 IoT protocols

Deployment of 5G and AI-enhanced IoT systems is accelerating. This, in turn, is driving up the number of IoT-connected devices in our homes, cities, transportation systems and critical infrastructure.

One estimate suggests IoT-connected devices are multiplying at a 12 percent compound annual growth rate. By 2030, according to IoT Analytics, we will be relying on some 41 billion IoT devices worldwide, up from 17 billion at the close of 2023.

Largely out of the public eye, a lot of work is going on to assure security of this rapidly expanding, massively interconnected digital ecosystem. I had the chance to discuss this at length with Thomas Rosteck, Division President of Connected Secure Systems (CSS) at Infineon Technologies.

We met at Infineon’s OktoberTech™ Silicon Valley 2024 conference, which I had the privilege of attending recently at the Computer History Museum. For a drill down on our conversation, please view the accompanying videocast. My big takeaways:

DEEP TECH NEWS: Respecting individual rights by using ‘privacy preserving aggregate statistics’

By Byron V. Acohido

To sell us more goods and services, the algorithms of Google, Facebook and Amazon exhaustively parse our digital footprints.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with companies seeking to better understand their customers. However, over the past 20 years the practice of analyzing user data hasn’t advanced much beyond serving the business models of these tech giants.

That could be about to change. Scientists at NTT Research are working on an advanced type of cryptography that enables businesses to perform aggregate data analysis on user data — without infringing upon individual privacy rights.

I had the chance to visit with , senior scientist at NTT Research’s Cryptography & Information Security (CIS) Lab, to learn more about the progress being made on a promising concept called “privacy preserving aggregate statistics.”

MY TAKE: Rising geopolitical tensions suggest a dire need for tighter cybersecurity in 2024

By Byron V. Acohido

Russia’s asymmetrical cyber-attacks have been a well-documented, rising global concern for most of the 2000s.

I recently visited with Mihoko Matsubara, Chief Cybersecurity Strategist at NTT to discuss why this worry has climbed steadily over the past few years – and is likely to intensify in 2024.

The wider context is all too easy to overlook. Infamous cyber opsattributed to Russia-backed hackers fall into a pattern that’s worth noting:

•Cyber attacks on Estonia (2007) Websites of Estonian banks, media outlets and government bodies get knocked down in a dispute over a Soviet-era war memorial.

•Cyber attacks on Georgia (2008, 2019) Georgian government websites get defaced; thousands of

STEPS FORWARD: How decentralizing IoT could help save the planet — by driving decarbonization

By Byron V. Acohido

The Internet of Things (IoT) is on the threshold of ascending to become the Internet of Everything (IoE.)

Related:Why tech standards matter

IoT is transitioning from an array of devices that we can control across the Internet into a realm where billions of IoE devices can communicate with each other and make unilateral decisions on our behalf.

This, of course, is the plot of endless dystopian books and movies that end with rogue machines in charge. Yet IoE, at this nascent stage, holds much promise to tilt us towards a utopia where technology helps to resolve our planet’s most intractable problems.

This was the theme of Infineon Technologies’ OktoberTech 2023 conference, which I had the privilege of attending at the Computer History Museum in the heart of Silicon Valley. I had the chance to visit with Thomas Rosteck, Infineon’s Division President of Connected Secure Systems (CSS.)

Infineon supplies semiconductors embedded in smart systems, most notably in automotive, power and IoT. What I found most commendable

DEEP TECH NEWS: Sophos X-Ops advances threat intelligence sharing to the next level

By Byron V. Acohido

Threat intelligence sharing has come a long way since Valentine’s Day 2015.

I happened to be in the audience at Stanford University when President Obama took to the stage to issue an executive order challenging the corporate sector and federal government to start collaborating as true allies.

Obama’s clarion call led to the passage of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, the creation of Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations (ISAOs) and the jump-starting of several private-sector sharing consortiums.

Material progress in threat intel sharing, indeed, has been made. Yet, there remains much leeway for improvements. I had the chance to discuss this with Christopher Budd, director of Sophos X-Ops, the company’s cross-operational task force of security defenders.

Budd explained how Sophos X-Ops is designed to dismantle security silos internally, while also facilitating

Older Articles »

The Last Watchdog

Videocasts

News alert: RSAC 2025 ramps up – watch Byron Acohido on Bospar’s Politely Pushy podcast

By Byron V. Acohido

MY TAKE: Securing the Internet of Everything: why self-healing devices are the next frontier

By Byron V. Acohido

MY TAKE: Technology breakthroughs, emerging standards are coalescing to assure IoT integrity

By Byron V. Acohido

DEEP TECH NEWS: Respecting individual rights by using ‘privacy preserving aggregate statistics’

By Byron V. Acohido

MY TAKE: Rising geopolitical tensions suggest a dire need for tighter cybersecurity in 2024

By Byron V. Acohido

STEPS FORWARD: How decentralizing IoT could help save the planet — by driving decarbonization

By Byron V. Acohido

DEEP TECH NEWS: Sophos X-Ops advances threat intelligence sharing to the next level

By Byron V. Acohido