Cyber threats and cyber criminals indiscriminately target the old as well as young regardless of race, creed or origin. Teens and young adults must realize that on the Internet nobody knows you’re a rat. How do we keep kids and young adults safe in an era of AI-driven attacks?
Tom Arnold, Adjunct Professor, Digital Evidence & Forensics, Cybersecurity Graduate Program at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, joins Business Security Weekly to discuss his new book: The Digital Detective: First Intervention. We examine how technologies like deepfakes, voice cloning, and hyper-personalized scams are being used to target younger audiences, and what parents, educators, communities, and CISOs can do to build awareness, resilience, and smart digital habits.
Learn how today’s highly organized operations, powered by automation and advanced AI, power the bad actors’ tools, techniques, and procedures—making them more effective than ever. Understanding the past helps us prepare for the future—and protect the next generation online, including our employees.
Segment Resources:
- https://www.idigitaldetective.com/blog
- https://www.idigitaldetective.com/
- https://www.unlv.edu/degree/ms-cybersecurity
In the leadership and communications segment, Executives say cybersecurity has outgrown the IT department, The Most Dangerous Leadership Mistake Isn’t a Wrong Answer. It’s a Wrong Question, Building cyber talent through competition, residency, and real-world immersion, and more!
Tom Arnold teaches in the Cybersecurity graduate program at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. In the past he Co-founded Payment Software Company (d/b/a PSC), part of NCC Group. Based out of San Jose, California. In his most recent role, he headed up the forensics and audit teams, specializing in internal and external security assessments related to US and international standards. In early 2025, Tom Arnold’s novel The Digital Detective: First Intervention was released. The story is how a 14-year-old and his friend use forensics to foil an international terror plot. The novel is targeted at age 9+ readers and structured as a first chapter book with the intent of teaching cyber hygiene and security to young adults and readers.
Mr. Arnold has been directly involved investigating security breach cases involving unauthorized access to computer systems and cloud environments. He has been the lead investigator on large breaches where environments spanned over 7,000 servers and involved complex threat hunting to find the adversary. Mr. Arnold has provided consulting to the US Secret Service, gives policy guidance to US government and regulatory agencies, and is on the steering committee for the Las Vegas branch of the USSS/Cyber Fraud Task Force. He also was sought out to give expert testimony to the US Senate and House of Representatives on the proposed SAFE Act and Export Administration Act. Mr. Arnold has an extensive background in Internet eBusiness systems and electronic commerce, having published several white papers, and designed and consulted to some of the most successful electronic businesses.
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Matt Alderman
- Executives say cybersecurity has outgrown the IT department
Cybersecurity has moved from a technical problem to a boardroom concern tied to survival. A global Rimini Street study of senior executives shows security risk shaping decisions on technology, talent, and long term planning across industries that keep economies running.
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Salesforce is dialing back LLMs, leaning on deterministic automation and guardrails after reliability gaps. The aim: predictable outcomes, clean data, and no missed steps.
- The Most Dangerous Leadership Mistake Isn’t a Wrong Answer. It’s a Wrong Question.
Peter Drucker once warned us: “The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions.”
Decades later, this line still hits, maybe harder than ever.
Because today, leadership teams aren’t failing due to lack of data. They’re failing because they’re measuring the wrong things with full confidence.
- Bring Your Extended Leadership Team into Strategy Decisions
When strategies don’t work, people blame the C-suite for lack of clarity or follow-through, middle managers for blocking progress, or frontline employees for not playing their part. Yet the real influence often sits with a different group entirely: the extended leadership team (ELT), the tier beneath the C-suite comprising business-unit presidents, regional CEOs, and functional heads. These leaders make choices every day about which customers to prioritize, which capabilities to build, where to allocate resources, and which longstanding activities and processes to evolve. Yet they’re frequently treated as recipients of strategy rather than its architects. The result is predictable: Strategies that look coherent in the boardroom fail at the next level down and beyond. When the C-suite and the ELT operate as a connected, strategically capable system, organizations execute more coherently, adapt more quickly, and build stronger momentum.
- 10 Books Every Professional Should Read for Leadership and Work–Life Balance
Leadership lessons on clarity, resilience, and work–life balance in high-pressure roles
- Building cyber talent through competition, residency, and real-world immersion
Chrisma Jackson, Director of Cybersecurity & Mission Computing Center and CISO at Sandia National Laboratories, reflects on where the cyber talent pipeline breaks down and what it takes to fix it. She discusses skill gaps, hiring and retention realities, and how cybersecurity careers are evolving beyond traditional paths.
- Your Brain Decodes Color 200ms Before Words—Are You Sending the Wrong Signals?
Before you read this sentence, your brain already processed the colors on this page. Colors constantly send emotional signals to your brain, often without you realizing it. The shade of your shirt, the paint on your walls, and the logo on your favorite product are all shaping your mood, decisions, and how others perceive you.
