# Hero Culture and a $1 Million Mistake

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Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/threat-talks-your-gateway-to-cybersecurity-insights-6755159/hero-culture-and-a-1-million-mistake.md
Podcast: [Threat Talks - Your Gateway to Cybersecurity Insights](https://stenobird.com/podcast/threat-talks-your-gateway-to-cybersecurity-insights-6755159)
Published: 2026-05-26T08:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://threat-talks.com/hero-culture-and-a-1-million-mistake/
Audio file: https://2.gum.fm/op3.dev/e/pdcn.co/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/pdst.fm/e/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/media.transistor.fm/8f92fd42/9ccc78e5.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/threat-talks-your-gateway-to-cybersecurity-insights-6755159/episodes/hero-culture-and-a-1-million-mistake
Duration seconds: 1203

## Resource

A company skips a security check two days before Black Friday and loses $1 million when transactions land in the wrong bank accounts. A machine learning team is told no on production data access, gets it via SharePoint anyway, and a year later the data is on contractor laptops nobody can account for. Two stories, one pattern: when security blocks, the risky work doesn’t stop – it just happens without you. Lieuwe Jan Koning, Co-founder and CTO at ON2IT Cybersecurity, sits down with Sina Yazdanmehr, Founder and Managing Director of Aplite GmbH, on the prevention paradox, why a “no” from the CISO is an illusion of control, and how a technical security team turns into a business partner instead of a roadblock. Timestamps 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:55 The $1 million Black Friday story 00:04:14 Hero culture rewards shipping, not prevention 00:06:55 The prevention paradox 00:08:00 NIS2 and executive accountability 00:09:00 Avoiding the Department of No 00:12:18 Production data on contractor laptops 00:16:13 The technical CISO as business partner Key Topics Covered Why hero culture quietly trains organizations to bypass security under deadline pressure The prevention paradox: why the person who avoids a loss never gets the credit What happens after a CISO says no: shadow workflows, friendly handovers, and data on laptops nobody owns What a counter-proposal in risk-based language gets you that a flat refusal does not Related ON2IT Content & Referenced Resources Aplite GmbH: https://aplite.de Previous Threat Talks with Sina Yazdanmehr (Security Culture part 1): https://youtu.be/1JnAsXDCKzM?si=qFlMxC617E30U1dW Previous Threat Talks with Sina Yazdanmehr: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBodTl_nY1w Previous Threat Talks with Sina Yazdanmehr: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBw…

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