Mark Weatherford is an American cyber security professional who has held extremely high positions in both the public and private sector. He was appointed the first deputy under secretary for cyber security at the US Department of Homeland Security from 2011-2013. Mark brings a wealth of experience and insight into a subject that all of us should be worried about in this day and age. He gives examples of how things are unfolding in regards to the cybersecurity and steps we can take to try and mitigate risk. The basic infrastructure of the internet is essentially the same as it was back in the 90’s. A lot of physical infrastructure hasn’t really changed for most things since they were designed, however there has been layers of technology added. Michael uses the Hoover Dam as an example of old infrastructure with new technology layered on and asks, “Is it possible for the dam’s security to be hacked?” Mark says he always works from the viewpoint that absolutely everything can be broken into. Michael moves on to ask about Hillary Clinton’s home server and what the scandal entailed. “Puzzling” is the word that Mark uses to describe the situation. She hired a company to build an email server and essentially put it physically in her basement but managed it remotely. None of this made sense or seemed well thought out. There are plenty of things you can do to protect infrastructure and it didn’t seem that they put any of those measures in place. Michael and Mark end on discussing the idea that intelligence is all about deception. This is one of the biggest challenges in working in cyber security — figuring out what is true and what is false. In this episode of Trend Following Radio: Cyber hacking Hillary Clinton server scandal Podesta hacking Cyber security “Model what you admire” Partisanship in cyber security Game theory