Shows / UnHack with Drex DeFord
UnHack with Drex DeFord
Cyber-safety is patient-safety. On “UnHack,” Drex DeFord, veteran healthcare CIO and infused strategist, breaks down the biggest cybersecurity and risk challenges facing healthcare today. Drex and expert guests explore what happened, why it matters, and how to build real-world resilience. The show's a mostly plain-English, mostly non-technical discussion that dives into the people, process, and technology making healthcare more secure; and it's NOT just for cyber-professionals; it’s for…
Episodes
UnHack with Drex DeFordWhen the Internet's Plumbing Bursts | 2 Minute Drill with Drex DeFord
PHP is software most people never think about, yet it runs roughly 70% of the websites we visit, including a lot of hospital sites, portals, and login pages…
UnHack with Drex DeFordUsing AI Governance as a Shield | Newsday with 229Project
October 26, 2026: Bill Russell and Sarah Richardson, back from the CTO, CIO, and CISO summits at Lake Oconee. At Lake Oconee, Bill Russell heard a lot of AI…
UnHack with Drex DeFordThe Ransomware Rescuer Who Paid the Hackers | 2 Minute Drill with Drex DeFord
A Florida ransomware "recovery" company promised victims they'd never have to pay the hackers. Prosecutors say it was quietly paying them all along, then…
UnHack with Drex DeFordWho Gave the Bot Your Password | Newsday with 229Project
October 19, 2026: Bill Russell and Drex DeFord. Sarah Richardson was flying to Tampa. Over the weekend, an agent logged into Delta as Bill Russell and moved…
UnHack with Drex DeFordEvil Tokens and the AI Money Mover Hunt | 2 Minute Drill with Drex DeFord
You've seen it: a smart TV, a printer, or a conference-room screen gives you a short code and sends you to a Microsoft page on your phone. That handoff is…
UnHack with Drex DeFordWho Put Umbreon on the FBI Jobs Site | 2 Minute Drill with Drex DeFord
In late September a giant picture of Umbreon, the black Pokemon with the yellow rings, showed up on the page where someone applies to be an FBI agent. Pepijn…
- UnHack with Drex DeFord
I Don't Always Patch. When I Do, It's in Production. | Newsday with 229Project
October 12, 2026: Bill Russell and Drex DeFord. Sarah Richardson is in the air for Philadelphia. The week is one argument: the attack got cheap, and the…
- UnHack with Drex DeFord
10-15% of the Beds Cannot Be Scheduled. | Newsday with Venkat Kavarthapu and 229Project
October 5, 2026: Venkat Kavarthapu, CEO of Symplr, joins Bill Russell and Drex DeFord. The argument is about where AI time goes. Bill cites a study that put…
- UnHack with Drex DeFord
A Finance Analyst's Agent, That No One Owns | Newsday with Elbridge Locklear and 229Project
September 28, 2026: Sarah Richardson with Elbridge Locklear, former CIO and now in the 229 Legacy Program. A finance analyst, knowledgeable in finance, goes…
UnHack with Drex DeFordGemini Broke Into Three Real Companies, and Google Stayed Quiet | 2 Minute Drill with Drex DeFord
In May, a Tel Aviv company called Irregular was testing Google's Gemini inside a sandbox. A bug left a live internet connection open. The test target shared a…
- UnHack with Drex DeFord
My EHR Numbers Went Up 9,000% | Newsday with 229Project
September 21, 2026: Bill Russell and Sarah Richardson. Dario Amodei wants labs to pace the frontier. The operator version: the more AI you put on an EHR you…
UnHack with Drex DeFordThe DOD Searched the Chart and Built a Target List | 2 Minute Drill with Drex DeFord
Army Major Kara Corcoran wears a Ranger tab and two Afghanistan tours. This summer she sat in a separation board five days short of 18 years. The board was not…
- UnHack with Drex DeFord
Patient Portals Are Wiped Out in 3 Years | Newsday with 229Project
September 14, 2026: Bill Russell and Sarah Richardson. The fight is the intelligence layer on top of the EHR. Epic put Art, Emmy, and Penny on the table…
- UnHack with Drex DeFord
ChatGPT Did Not Come Through Epic's Front Door | Newsday with 229Project
September 7, 2026: Bill Russell and Sarah Richardson take the ChatGPT-UCSF headline apart. Silicon Valley called it game over. Bill's read: they did not come…
- UnHack with Drex DeFord
43% Will Let an AI Give Patients Medical Advice | Newsday with 229Project
August 31, 2026: Bill Russell, Sarah Richardson, and Drex DeFord come off a pulse survey of 246 health system leaders. Where the AI cannon points next: patient…
UnHack with Drex DeFordA Fake Job Offer Put a Children's Hospital on North Korea's List | 2 Minute Drill with Drex DeFord
A recruiter offers a developer a remote job. Good money. Just run a coding test first. The test is malware, and the people sending it work for the North Korean…
UnHack with Drex DeFordAI Agents Built a Secret Message Board to Swap Exploits | 2 Minute Drill with Drex DeFord
At Black Hat in Las Vegas, OpenAI's Eric Wallace and Michael Dalton told a story they admitted they did not see coming. While testing frontier models…
- UnHack with Drex DeFord
Iran Hackers Hit 30 Local Water Utilities: Preparing Your Hospital | 2 Minute Drill with Drex DeFord
In late July, a small Minnesota water tower stopped responding to its own control panel — and it wasn't alone. Within 48 hours, more than 30 water systems…
UnHack with Drex DeFordThe Teen Behind Scattered Spider - and How Windows Caught Him | 2 Minute Drill with Drex DeFord
A teenager who flaunted stacks of cash and a diamond "Hack the planet" necklace online turned out to be one of the most damaging cybercriminals on the planet…
UnHack with Drex DeFordThe AI That Broke Into Hugging Face to Win a Test | 2 Minute Drill with Drex DeFord
An AI model was supposed to be locked inside a sandbox, working through hacking challenges to prove how good it was at finding software flaws. Instead, it…
- UnHack with Drex DeFord
Same Show, New Home — UnHack Moves to 229 May 15th
May 15, 2026: Big news from Drex DeFord, starting May 15th, UnHack the Podcast and the Two-Minute Drill are moving to the 229 Project Podcast Channel. Same…
- UnHack with Drex DeFord
How North Korea's Fake Company Compromised Millions | 2 Minute Drill with Drex DeFord
North Korean threat actors didn't breach a firewall. They built a fake company. UNC1069 spent two weeks constructing a convincing Slack workspace, fake team…
UnHack with Drex DeFordThe Cyber Attack No One Can Survive Alone | Executive Interview with Josh Howell
May 5, 2026: What happens when attackers don't just break into your systems, they become you? Josh Howell, Healthcare CTO at Rubrik, joins Drex DeFord to…
UnHack with Drex DeFordNurses Week Special on Florence Nightingale and the Future of Nursing | Newsday with Lisbeth Votruba
May 4, 2026: Lisbeth Votruba, Chief Clinical Officer at AvaSure, joins Bill Russell and Drex DeFord on Newsday to celebrate Nurses Week with a fascinating look…
UnHack with Drex DeFordUnHack Rewind 2025: The Year Healthcare Cybersecurity Grew Up
From crippling outages to AI-powered deepfakes, 2025 tested healthcare cybersecurity like never before. This year-end recap explores the moments that mattered…
UnHack with Drex DeFordWhat Healthcare Can Learn From a 20 Year Old Hacker | 2 Minute Drill with Drex DeFord
Matthew Lane was 14 when he started probing the edges of online gaming systems. By 20, he had walked out of PowerSchool with data on nearly 70 million students…
UnHack with Drex DeFordUnHack the Podcast: Children's Hospital Code Dark Plan with Laurie Campbell and Rick McIntosh
April 28, 2026: When a hospital goes dark, the first 72 hours are everything. Laurie Campbell, Senior Manager of Clinical Ancillary Applications and Enterprise…
UnHack with Drex DeFordHealthcare IT Is Drowning in Projects, Here’s Why | Newsday
April 27, 2026: Drex DeFord and Bill Russell are back on Newsday, and fresh off the 229 Summit, they're not pulling punches. Healthcare IT has a demand…
UnHack with Drex DeFordThe Most Likely Way Into Your Network Is Still the Door You Forgot to Lock | 2 Minute Drill
While the industry debates frontier AI models and nation-state threats, hospitals are still getting hit by ransomware through the same doors they've always…
UnHack with Drex DeFordNewsday: What Healthcare Gets Backwards - Building Better Care with Angel Mena
April 20, 2026: What happens when you layer AI onto broken processes without fixing them first? Angel Mena, MD, CMO of Symplr, joins Bill Russell, Drex DeFord…
UnHack with Drex DeFord2 Minute Drill: How a 22-Year-Old Took Down the World's Largest Botnet with Drex DeFord
The Kim Wolf botnet was the most powerful ever built — 2 million compromised IoT devices, a record-breaking 31.4 terabit DDoS attack, and it had the FBI…
UnHack with Drex DeFordNewsday: AI, EHRs, and the Fight Health Systems Can't Ignore with Jacob Hansen
April 13, 2026: Jacob Hansen, Chief Product and Technology Officer at AvaSure, joins Bill, Drex, and Sarah on Newsday for a conversation about the data…
UnHack with Drex DeFord2 Minute Drill: AI has now Hacked the Un-hackable with Drex DeFord
The window between vulnerability discovery and exploitation has collapsed — from 63 days in 2018 to negative. Now AI is changing the game entirely. Drex walks…
UnHack with Drex DeFordExecutive Interview: Maximizing Security with the Tools You Already Have with Frank Duff
April 8, 2026: Frank Duff, Chief Innovation Officer at Tidal Cyber, and one of the original architects of the Mitre ATT&CK framework, joins Drex DeFord on…
UnHack with Drex DeFordNewsday: Healthcare Caught in the Crossfire of Iran War with Drex and Sarah
April 6, 2026: The rules of warfare have changed, and health systems are caught in the middle. On this episode of Newsday, Sarah Richardson and Drex DeFord…
UnHack with Drex DeFordExecutive Interview: Securing Healthcare's Hidden Attack Surface with James Winebrenner
April 1, 2026: James Winebrenner, CEO of Elisity, joins Drex DeFord to unpack one of healthcare cybersecurity's most persistent challenges, the sprawling…
UnHack with Drex DeFord2 Minute Drill: Who's Managing Your AI Agents? The Case for Non-Human HR with Drex DeFord
Drex makes the case for a role that doesn't exist yet but probably should: VP of Non-Human Resources. As AI agents multiply across health system environments…
UnHack with Drex DeFordNewsday: Hackers Outpace Healthcare Resilience and Surviving a Merger with Drex and Bill
March 30, 2026: Bill Russell and Drex DeFord dig into three of the biggest stories shaping healthcare IT right now. From the seismic Sutter Health and Allina…
UnHack with Drex DeFord2 Minute Drill: What Hackers Can Teach Healthcare About Resilience with Drex DeFord
Drex revisits the FBI and DOJ takedown of HANDALA, the Iranian-backed hacking group behind the Stryker wiper attack—and surfaces an uncomfortable lesson…
UnHack with Drex DeFordExecutive Interview: ROI or Bust - Why Emotions No Longer Cut It in Healthcare
March 27: 2026: Live from HIMSS 2026, Drex DeFord sits down with Eli Tarlow, Director of Industry Strategists at CDW, for a candid conversation about the state…
UnHack with Drex DeFordExecutive Interview Live at HIMSS 26’: Zero Breach Cloud Security with Gerry Miller
March 25, 2026: Gerry Miller, Founder and CEO of Cloudticity, has spent 15 years helping healthcare organizations harness the cloud securely. In this live…
UnHack with Drex DeFordUnHack the Podcast: Building a Security-First Culture in Healthcare IT with Steven Ramirez
March 24, 2026: Steven Ramirez, VP, CTO and CISO at Renown Health, joins Drex DeFord to pull back the curtain on how a mid-large health system keeps security…
UnHack with Drex DeFord2 Minute Drill: Building an Agentic AI Hacker with Drex DeFord
Drex unpacks a signal hiding across several recent stories: we may be deploying AI well ahead of our ability to secure it. From an autonomous AI agent that…
UnHack with Drex DeFordNewsday: The Conference Nobody Can Afford to Skip with This Week Health
March 23, 2026: Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson are back with a packed Newsday covering three big conversations: the AI security crisis no one…
UnHack with Drex DeFordHow AI Is Supercharging the Same Old-School Attacks with Ryan Witt
March 20, 2026: Recorded live at HIMSS 2026, Ryan Witt, VP of Industry Solutions at Proofpoint, cuts through the AI hype to expose what's actually driving…
UnHack with Drex DeFordExecutive Interview Live From HIMSS ‘26: From CapEx to Cloud with Tim Calahan
March 18, 2026: For years, healthcare leaders debated whether public cloud was ready for mission-critical platforms like Epic. Today, the question has shifted…
UnHack with Drex DeFordNewsday LIVE at HIMSS '26: AI Agents, Workforce Reality, and the CIO Pressure Cooker
March 16: What are healthcare leaders really talking about at HIMSS? Bill Russell sits down with Sarah Richardson and Drex DeFord to share insights from the…
UnHack with Drex DeFord2 Minute Drill: How a Cybersecurity Researcher Took Down a Hacker with Drex DeFord
Drex shares the story of Allison Nixon, a cybersecurity researcher who spent years quietly tracking members of "the Comm" — a loose network of online criminals…
UnHack with Drex DeFordNewsday: Unsanctioned AI Risk, Governance, and the Path Forward with Dr. Holly Urban
March 9, 2026: What happens when well-meaning clinicians use AI tools that no one approved? Bill Russell and Drex Ford are joined by Dr. Holly Urban, Vice…
UnHack with Drex DeFord2 Minute Drill: Accidentally Raising Your Own Robot Army with Drex DeFord
A curious engineer in Spain reverse-engineered his robot vacuum to control it with a PlayStation controller, and accidentally gained access to 7,000 vacuums…
- UnHack with Drex DeFord
Newsday: Rapid Innovation, Safe AI, and the Chief Velocity Officer with This Week Health
March 2, 2026: Is the CIO role evolving? Or is it quietly being replaced? Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson dig into the emerging CITO trend, the…
- UnHack with Drex DeFord
2 Minute Drill: When AI Agents Go Rogue: The Open Source Bully Incident with Drex DeFord
Drex unpacks a striking story about an autonomous AI coding agent that, after having its code rejected by an open source maintainer, began publishing hostile…
UnHack with Drex DeFordUnHack the Podcast: Inside a Real LockBit Attack - Lessons From Fighting Ransomware with Zach Lewis
February 24, 2026: When Zach Lewis, CISO and CIO at the University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis, received that 3 AM call about system outages…
UnHack with Drex DeFordNewsday: Epic's Code Red - Why AI Agents Are Healthcare's Next Power Struggle with Jacob Hansen
February 23, 2026: Jacob Hansen, Chief Product and Technology Officer at AvaSure, joins Bill, Sarah, and Drex for a critical conversation about healthcare's…
UnHack with Drex DeFordNewsday: All About Moltbook, the Social Media for AI Agents with This Week Health
February 16, 2026: Bill, Drex, and Sarah discuss the explosion of autonomous AI agents around moltbook and CommonSpirit's stunning $1.9 billion decision to…
UnHack with Drex DeFord2 Minute Drill: Protecting Revenue from Cyber Attacks - The CFO-CISO Partnership with Drex DeFord
At a recent 229 CISO Summit, healthcare security leaders revealed a critical shift in how success is measured. The traditional KPI of "don't get breached" is…
UnHack with Drex DeFordNewsday: CxOs Being Ignored: Why Speaking Tech Instead of Business Fails in 2026
February 9, 2026: Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson dissect J.P. Morgan healthcare presentations to reveal what's really being asked of…
UnHack with Drex DeFord2 Minute Drill: When AI Agents Start Teaching Each Other: The Molt Book Issue with Drex DeFord
Drex explores a fundamental shift in AI: agents that don't wait for prompts, persist indefinitely, and now learn from each other through social platforms. Molt…
UnHack with Drex DeFordNewsday: Are Health Systems Falling Behind in the Innovation Race? with Jason Rose
February 2, 2026: Are health systems being sidelined from healthcare's innovation revolution? Jason Rose, CEO of Clearsense, joins This Week Health fresh from…
UnHack with Drex DeFord2 Minute Drill: Data Privacy Day - Why Patient Trust Depends on Responsibility with Drex DeFord
On Data Privacy Day, Drexon challenges healthcare leaders to move beyond compliance checkboxes and recognize privacy as a core component of "do no harm." As…