Stopping Ransomware Before It Starts - Episode 67, Glenn Wilkinson, Agger Labs

From dial-up curiosity to killing ransomware in milliseconds, Glenn Wilkinson has been inside the attacker's mind his entire career, and now he's using it to defend you. Hosts Harry Baldwin and Matt Rose sit down with Glenn Wilkinson, CEO and Co-Founder of Agger Labs, for a wide-ranging conversation covering Glenn's journey from self-taught teenage hacker in the 90s to serial founder, and a deep dive into everything ransomware where it came from, how it became a thriving criminal industry, who it's really targeting, and what businesses can actually do about it. Key topics covered: How Glenn went from dial-up internet and underground hacker forums to founding multiple cyber security companies The hard lessons of the hacker-to-founder transition why great engineers often miss the business fundamentals The origins of ransomware: from the AIDS Trojan in 1989 (distributed on a floppy disk) to CryptoLocker's Bitcoin pivot in 2013 Double and triple extortion why backups alone no longer protect you How NotPetya (2017) marked the first major nation state supply chain attack, and why cyber is now a precursor to kinetic warfare Ransomware as a Service: the industrialisation of cybercrime, affiliate models, and initial access brokers Law enforcement fighting back Operation Kronos, hack-back legislation, and the moped theft analogy AI's actual (limited) impact on ransomware today and where the real risk lies Why SMBs are consistently the most vulnerable and the least prepared What any business can do right now to reduce ransomware risk The debate around banning ransomware payments How Agger Labs fits into the modern security stack: one thing, done well About the guest: Glenn Wilkinson is an ethical hacker, keynote speaker, and 3x founder. With a computer science background from Oxford and decades of hands-on penetration testing, Glenn has legally hacked 100+ organisations, spoken at Black Hat and DEF CON, and appeared on CNN and BBC. He is the CEO and Co-Founder of Agger Labs, which builds lightweight ransomware protection that detects and kills attacks before encryption begins running from Windows 7 to the latest server editions, no signatures or AI required. Connect with Glenn: LinkedIn | glenn-wilkinson.com | agger-labs.com Cyber Security Matters is brought to you by neuco.