Cybersecurity Today Year-End Review: The Highs and Lows of Cybersecurity in 2025
Dec 20, 2025
Tammy Harper, a security researcher known for her expertise in ransomware, joins Laura Payne, a cybersecurity professional focused on incident trends, along with David Shipley, a cybersecurity practitioner, and John Pinard, head of IT operations at a credit union. They discuss alarming trends in ransomware payments and the clever rise of phishing attacks, particularly MFA vulnerabilities. The panel also examines AI's growing dual role in both enhancing security measures and facilitating cybercrime, highlighting the crucial need for community support and empathy in cybersecurity.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Keep Phishing Exercises Realistic
- Continue regular phishing simulations and realistic training to surface weaknesses.
- Combine training with email filtering and technical controls because awareness alone is insufficient.
AI Mirrors Human Social Engineering
- Naive AI assistants amplify social-engineering risks because they follow prompts literally.
- Prompt injection often equates to classic social engineering applied to models, increasing attack surface.
Dev Tools Aren't Ready For Agentic AI
- IDEs and dev tools weren't designed for agentic AI and expose new vulnerability classes.
- Automated agent actions interacting with tools create unforeseen security failures at development time.