Kate Fazzini is the CEO and partner for Blue Line Recoveries, a company devoted to clawing back funds lost to wire fraud. She is well known for being a highly devoted intuitive, goal-driven, leading cybersecurity risk and privacy expert who takes pride in being able to share her knowledge of the field; she serves as a professor of Cybersecurity at Georgetown University and a keynote speaker, having formerly reported extensively on cybersecurity as a staff member the Wall Street Journal, and CNBC. In addition, she's the author of the 2019 book Kingdom of Lies: Unnerving Adventures in the World of Cybercrime. Before her role in academics and media, Kate helped develop effective security processes and create disaster communication plans and education experts as a cybersecurity executive at JP Morgan Chasing Company and Promontory Financial Group (an IBM Company).
The Podcast Episode highlights include:
- Handling the Hustle Culture
- Framework for Holistically Understanding and Communicating Cybersecurity
- BEC and the Financial Fraud Kill Chain
Early Start
As with many in the cybersecurity and tech industry, Kate Frazzini didn’t go to school with a focus on tech but had been intrigued with it from an early age. That early interest led to her making little black boxes for her friends to avoid excessive phone charges (Yes, that was a thing before cell phones). Later, while in college majoring in English she worked at the campus computer store and quickly found her passion in technology and people. In her words, she found that she loves “helping them translate their expertise in technology to the real world.”
Focusing on What Matters
In 2019 Frazzini was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis shortly after attending Black Hat. As would be expected, it was a devastating diagnosis and she had to come to grips with the effects including getting exhausted commuting, staying up late, and working excessively. For someone like Frazzini who was always on-the-go, this was difficult to come to terms with.
As a mom of two children who was invested in their success and being there for them, she had to re-evaluate things. That came in the way of taking a break from social media and the always-on lifestyle. Surprisingly, that break for her was not difficult, in fact she found it cathartic and noted she didn’t miss being a public figure although she did miss the professional hair and makeup that came with her job at CNBC. Most notably, she found balance – something many crave, but rarely find.
Breaking Down Life into 5 Vectors
Frazzini shared that each year she breaks things down into five vectors of her life:
- Family
- Financial
- Spirituality
- Health
- Home life (DYI project)
She also notes that she has overarching goals each year to be around interesting people. Both the Wall Street Journal and CNBC gave her the chance to meet incredibly well-educated, really bright, interesting people, which helped her through most of her career.
The Grind Has to be Worth It
In Frazzini’s words, she is an “opponent of hustle culture,” yet recognizes as a start-up she falls into that trap. She offers up that ChatGPT will give some time back whether it be where she would have spent two hours drawing up a contract or typing away at something, there will be a shift of how time is spent.
She’s also having fun while continuing to be surrounded by interesting people. Her business partners in Blue Line Recoveries, John Golasso and Rob Giannetta are former NYPD. Golasso was on the Joint Terrorism Task Force and Giannetta did security work for churches and synagogues in New York City. They are both brilliant fraud investigators and incredibly well-connected.
Blue Line Recoveries helps victims of Business Email Compromise (BEC) and other types of wire fraud recover their money. As stated on the Blue Line Recoveries LinkedIn page, they work quickly with their substantial law enforcement and financial services industry partners to help recover losses for their clients.
Even the most sophisticated people can fall prey to Business Email Compromise scams, and she points to the fact that it’s a real dollar loss vs a calculation of downtime for example.
Breaches, Critical Thinking, and More
Their discussion covered a plethora of cybersecurity topics including the skill gap, the need for critical, learning from breaches including Anthem, Equifax, and Capital One and concerns around AI and social engineering.
You can listen to the audio podcast on any of your preferred platforms and hear more from Frazzini:
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
Google Podcasts
