728: Lower Your Risk of Being Hacked, with Qasim Ijaz

Coaching for Leaders

Dave Stachowiak

Education, Business, Management, Self-improvement, Careers

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Qasim Ijaz
Qasim Ijaz is the director of cybersecurity at a leading healthcare organization, overseeing detection, incident response, vulnerability management, purple teaming, and cybersecurity engineering. With a strong background in offensive security and risk management, he has helped organizations strengthen their defenses against evolving threats. He is also a dedicated educator, mentoring professionals and sharing his expertise at conferences such as BSides and Black Hat.

You don’t need to go far in the news these days to find out that another organization was hacked. Data breeches are a nightmare scenario for both leaders and the people they support. In this episode, Qasim and I explore what your team and you can do to be a bit more prepared.
Key Points

Use multi-factor authentication, passphrases, and a password manager.
Freeze your personal credit reports. Do this for free directly with Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion.
Leaders in bigger roles (executives, CEOs, board members) are larger targets for hackers due to their access and also their ability to occasionally side-step organizational guidelines.
It’s the non-technical pieces of a cyber response that organizations are least prepared for.
Conduct incident response and disaster recovery tabletop exercises to uncover vulnerabilities before an attack.
Regardless of organizational policy, employees will use AI. The best prevention assumes the inevitability of human behavior and works with it to improve systems.

Resources Mentioned

Recommended password managers: 1Password, Apple password app, Proton Pass
Critical Security Controls by the Center for Internet Security
Resources for Small and Medium Businesses by the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency
2024 Data Breach Investigations Report by Verizon Business

Related Episodes

Dumb Things Smart People Do With Money, with Jill Schlesinger (episode 396)
Where to Start When Inheriting a Team in Crisis, with Lynn Perry Wooten (episode 603)
How to Use AI to Think Better, with José Antonio Bowen (episode 689)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You don't need to go far in the news these days to find out that another organization was hacked.
0:05.6	Data breaches are a nightmare scenario for both leaders and the people they support.
0:10.8	In this episode, what you and your team can do to be a bit more prepared.
0:16.7	This is Coaching for Leaders, Episode 728.
0:21.1	Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.
0:29.6	Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm your host,
0:35.4	Dave Stahoviac. Leaders aren't born.
0:39.0	They're made.
0:40.1	And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations.
0:45.5	So often on this show, we are talking about the people aspects of leadership.
0:50.9	It is critical to the work of leaders.
0:53.3	And, of course, we live in a world where so
0:55.8	much is driven by the technology around us. Having a foundational understanding of technology,
1:03.0	security, and what we need to do to prevent the worst case situations is essential for leaders
1:08.3	of all kinds, whether you're a professional in this space or, as many of us are not, being able to understand some of the foundational concepts.
1:17.0	And by the way, so much of it comes back to the people practices, too, as we're going to talk about in this conversation.
1:23.5	I am so pleased to welcome Qasem Ijazz.
1:25.7	He is the director of cybersecurity at a leading healthcare organization, overseeing detection, incident response, vulnerability management, purple teaming, and cybersecurity engineering.
1:36.0	With a strong background in offensive security and risk management, he has helped organizations strengthen their defenses against evolving threats.
1:43.6	He's also a dedicated educator,
1:45.5	mentoring professionals, and sharing his expertise at conferences such as B-Sides and Black Hat.
1:50.8	Kossam's also a alum of our academy. Kossum, so good to have you here.
	...

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