Cyberside Chats: Live! The Verizon Outage and the Cost of Concentration
The recent Verizon outage underscores a growing risk in today’s technology landscape: when critical services are concentrated among a small number of providers, failures don’t stay isolated.
In this live discussion, we’ll connect the Verizon outage to past telecom and cloud disruptions to examine how infrastructure dependency creates cascading business impact. We’ll also explore how large-scale outages intersect with security threats targeting telecommunications, where availability, confidentiality, and integrity failures increasingly overlap.
The session will close with actionable takeaways for strengthening resilience and risk planning across cybersecurity and IT programs.
Speakers
Founder
LMG Security
Sherri Davidoff is the Founder of LMG Security and the author of three books, including “Ransomware and Cyber Extortion” and “Data Breaches: Crisis and Opportunity.” As a recognized expert in cybersecurity, she has been called a “security badass” by the New York Times. Sherri is a regular instructor at the renowned Black Hat trainings and a faculty member at the Pacific Coast Banking School. She is also the co-author of Network Forensics: Tracking Hackers Through Cyberspace (Prentice Hall, 2012), and has been featured as the protagonist in the book, Breaking and Entering: The Extraordinary Story of a Hacker Called “Alien.” Sherri is a GIAC-certified forensic examiner (GCFA) and penetration tester (GPEN) and received her degree in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT.
Director of Training
LMG Security
Matt Durrin is the Director of Training at LMG Security. He is an instructor at the international Black Hat USA conference, where he has taught classes on ransomware and data breaches. Matt has conducted cybersecurity seminars, tabletop exercises, and classes for thousands of attendees in all sectors, including banking, retail, healthcare, government, and more. He is also the co-author of a book, Ransomware and Cyber Extortion: Response and Prevention. A seasoned cybersecurity and IT professional, Matt specializes in ransomware response and research, as well as the deployment of proactive cybersecurity solutions. Matt holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Montana, and his malware research has been featured on NBC Nightly News.
