The New CISO Ep.153 - Joseph Vossler | Just Fix It: How One Mantra Can Catch Cartels & Hunt Hackers

Guest: Joseph Vossler, Manager, Head of Global Threat Management, Security Operations, & Incident Response, Nutanix Joseph Vossler's career runs from a counter-cartel task force in Houston to the team that first walked into Volt Typhoon. In this episode of The New CISO, he tells Steve Moore how sixteen years of Army intelligence, counter-drug work and federal incident response produced a three-word philosophy: just fix it. He started in Army intelligence and deployed with the 82nd Airborne, then was picked up for a counter-drug task force in Houston — rented space, an undercover name, no uniforms, and 2 a.m. not unusual. Federal agents, county sheriffs and local police worked the same room, and ninety percent of that year's intake was cut. As a certified counter threat finance analyst he worked the money rather than the product: deposits carry a real phone number because someone wants confirmation the cash landed, and the money takes the shortest route it can. Following it upward reached cartel leadership faster than anything else. A second tour turned him from an intelligence analyst into an infantry fire team leader in the Sinai, on a peacekeeping mission that stopped being one. He returned to counter-drug, then moved to Washington, where the job shifted from facilitating one task force to coordinating all of them — a scale at which separate agencies turn out to be working different angles of the same case. A tour supporting the NSA moved him into security operations for good, then into a contractor role leading a thirty-six person incident response team at CISA — the go-bag crew that deployed to any agency, state or allied government that asked. Half that team went to Guam, to the electric co-op where Volt Typhoon surfaced. He is just as interested in what they built between deployments: an open-source malware analysis stack, and a beaconing model that cut command-and-control detection from days to five minutes. Nutanix found him on LinkedIn, and a month after he started his supervisor left, making him the most senior person on a team he barely knew. He grew it from alert triage into threat intelligence, threat hunting, penetration testing and forensics, a teammate owning each. What surprised him was not the technical work but the politics: projects he scoped at two months took six, until he learned to arrive with something to offer rather than ask. His interview question is still the same — tell me about a hard project — and he listens for iteration, not a flawless answer. Key Topics From Army intelligence to a joint counter-drug task force in Houston Working in plain clothes alongside federal, county and local agencies Following the money: why the cash trail beats the product trail Becoming an infantry team leader on a peacekeeping mission that wasn't Scaling from one task force to coordinating all of them Leading the go-bag incident response team that deployed on Volt Typhoon Why downtime is when a response team builds its next capability Walking into a senior role and losing your boss a month later The interview question that reveals iteration instead of perfection Political savvy as the leadership skill nobody warned him about Guest Bio Joseph Vossler is Manager and Head of Global Threat Management, Security Operations, and Incident Response at Nutanix. He has spent over sixteen years in the Army and Army National Guard across intelligence, infantry, counter-drug and cyber assignments, led a federal hunt and incident response team as a contractor, and serves in the 91st Cyber Brigade, where he built its annual Cyber Fortress exercise. GET A DEMO: 👉 Get a hands-on demo of the Exabeam products: https://www.exabeam.com/demo 🔔 Subscribe for more product demos and cybersecurity insights! ABOUT EXABEAM: Exabeam is the leader in Behavior Intelligence for the agentic enterprise. As organizations deploy digital workers and confront machine-speed adversaries, Exabeam applies agent-powered analytics to understand and govern the behavior of both human and non-human insiders. With integrated Exabeam Nova cybersecurity agents, Exabeam delivers flexible, industry-proven solutions for insider threat coverage of humans and agents and faster, more accurate threat detection, investigation, and response (TDIR). As the pioneer of user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) and the innovator behind Agent Behavior Analytics (ABA), Exabeam is trusted by more than 3,000 enterprises worldwide to reduce risk, secure the digital workforce, and accelerate security operations. Learn more at www.exabeam.com. Exabeam: Stop Insider Threats. Human or AI. CONNECT WITH US: X: https://x.com/exabeam LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exabeam/ Blog: https://www.exabeam.com/blog/