Episode 255: EDM, Meet CDM – Cyber Dance Music with Niels Provos

In this episode of The Security Ledger Podcast (#255) Paul speaks with Niels Provos – a cybersecurity luminary who helped build Google’s security team from the ground up. Paul and Niels talk about his latest project: the Cyberhouse-Collective, which hopes to inspire new generations of cybersecurity professionals by fusing infosec themes with Electronic Dance Music (EDM), and we check out some of his own music, released under the moniker Activ8te [Video Podcast] | [MP3] | [Transcript] One of the biggest cybersecurity challenges we face is the problem of awareness. Software is now central to the operation of our economy – as digital transformation washes over every industry. And yet, the awareness of cyber security risks – from phishing and social engineering attacks to software supply chain compromises – remains low. Nobody knows that better than our guest this week. Niels Provos has a storied, two decade career on the forefront of cybersecurity, starting in the late 1990s with his work as a graduate student on phenomena like steganography and honeypots. That work landed him a place as a founding member of Google’s security team, where he worked for 15 years, rising to the position of Distinguished Engineer and helping to develop protections for everything from denial of service attacks to safe browsing features to defenses against nation-state actors following the infamous 2009 Operation Aurora attack on Google by hackers linked to China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Niels Provos, Head of Security Efficacy at Lacework Niels’ subsequent work included a stint as the Head of Security at payments startup Stripe. He’s now at Lacework, a cloud security firm, where he serves as the Head of Security Efficacy. His work taught him plenty about cybersecurity – but also gave him a sobering appreciation of the difficulty organizations have in actually changing outcomes. “I’ve been working on this now for 25 years and I just don’t feel it’s getting better,” Niels told me. A pandemic epiphany And then the COVID pandemic happened. With Niels – as with so many of us – the pandemic prompted big changes to his day-to-day reality, as well as a reconsideration of where he’d been, and where he was going. In Niels’ case, that meant leaning into a budding interest in making music. He signed up to take some virtual classes in electronic music production at Boston’s Berkeley College of Music. His growing interest in producing electronic music soon fused with his interest in cybersecurity – prompting questions about how one might help the other. “One of the things that I’ve been bemoaning is the poor state of security in the world. And then you read about the scarcity of talent. And then I was like maybe I can combine all of this. And I decided to produce cyber security themed EDM tracks, where each track covers some security topics in the hope of, being fun to listen to and what people would feel like would like to dance to this.” — Niels Provos (Activ8te), Head of Security Efficacy at Lacework Meet Activ8te The result was the birth of Activ8te,