In this Business Blast Podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Stas Verberkt, a 29‑year‑old senior information security consultant and writer who recently moved from Amsterdam to New York. The conversation begins with Stas sharing a memorable social‑engineering exercise where his team obtained a campus laptop by exploiting a building manager’s goodwill, illustrating the attacker’s mindset. He then emphasizes that information security is fundamentally a creative discipline, requiring imagination both to breach and to defend systems. Shifting to broader business advice, Stas argues that the true value for consultants lies not in crafting strategy but in operationalizing it—turning plans into concrete actions, motivating teams, and tracking progress. He offers personal career counsel, noting that success also involves recognizing when to give up on unfulfilling pursuits to free oneself for more rewarding paths. When asked about happiness, he reflects that it stems from appreciating what one already has rather than constantly comparing to curated social‑media portrayals. Outside of work, Stas cites George Orwell’s early‑20th‑century writings on poverty as his favorite book, valuing the perspective of ordinary people. He admits he rarely uses quotes, preferring analogies and metaphors. The episode concludes with Stas providing his contact channels—email and LinkedIn—for listeners to connect.
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Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Stas Verberth with us. He's 29 years old and he's a senior information security consultant and writer, and he recently moved with his family from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to New York City. So welcome to the show, man.
Thank you, welcome, great to be here.
Pumped to have you here as well, and we'll dive into the first one. The first question I have for you today is, what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Cool. Well, you know, in my, in my industry, right, it's, it's where we're living in, you know, in a particularly different industry, the security industry. So I did my master's in information security, and one of the things I really enjoyed a lot about it is that we got to do actual, actual hacking attempts, if I say it like that. And the best one was a social engineering attempt. So how that works is that on the campus, you know, they would just give random laptops to, uh, to employees of the campus under some false premises, and then they went to discourage us and try and see, well, you know, you know, now know how to protect things, but let's think through the mind of an attacker, of a hacker. Go, you know, get those laptops. Um, right, this is the first time you actually get thrown into a situation like that because, you know, um, at least I've never really stolen anything. Um, so that was a first. Um, so, and, and, and what it made us, uh, have to do is actually go out there and study, you know, study these employees of the university. You know, how they would operate, how their day would look like, when they would leave the laptop alone, and how they would protect it. So for example, one of our targets, you know, would keep it very closed, locked in her room on the floor of the campus, and would be pretty, you know, had pretty good security behaviors. So it was pretty hard, but on the other hand, we did actually find out that But the building manager was a pretty friendly guy, so at some point the way to resolve this for us was, you know, to convince the building manager that she was having her birthday that week and we really should go in and, you know, decorate her room, put nice balloons and flowers and everything in the room. And he thought, you know, this is great, I'm going to open the door for you. And that's how we were able to get that, to retrieve that laptop for the exercise. No, I don't think the morale of the story is that stealing is a good thing or easy. But rather that in a lot of industries, it's very good to position yourself in, you know, at the other sides of the line, whether that's, you know, whether that's a hacker in my case or a customer in your case.
Definitely, man. Thank you for sharing. That is a great— I like the way that that all came full circle. That was cool. The next one I have for you, man, is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
Um, so besides that, uh, this is within— particularly within the security industry, I think what people don't recognize is people always see it as a very technical, uh, industry with people sitting behind, you know, black screens with green metrics, Matrix-style letters flowing down. Um, but it's actually a really creative industry, um, and to be, you know, successful in it, you need to be really creative. I think the previous story already shows that, you know, you need creativity both as an attacker but also as a defender, because in the end we're looking for, you know, new ways to get past something and thus to prevent that from happening. So yeah, creativity, creativity is great and undervalued, I'd say.
And what's your best piece of overall business advice, so not necessarily industry-specific?
One of the things that I value very much. So, um, as I said, I'm in consulting, and one thing you see often in consulting is that young graduates come into the industry and think the holy grail for them is doing strategy consulting, you know, helping businesses shape their strategy and being, you know, the guy that tells them what is the next thing down the line. But the big— the thing with most multinational companies, that they often have a very good idea of where they should be and what their strategy is. And the real power is not just being able to figure out that strategy and those goals, but actually being able to operationalize. I think one of the most valuable lessons to keep deep in your mind is you need to be able to operate, you need to be able to make things happen, to execute. Because I mean, keep in mind, imagine if tomorrow you were the CEO of a huge corporation. If you say we need to be here next week, right, that's not just going to happen. You need to motivate people, you need to steer people, you need to get buy-in throughout your organization, you need to have a plan, you need to track against it. Operating is so under— so much more important than it sometimes is recognized by young people coming in.
I agree. And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Oh, so many things. Um, I recently read an article that I really liked that said, you know, success is about also knowing when to give up. And it sounds like very negative, like successful people, do they give up? But if you think about it, giving up is not just saying, okay, I cannot do this one thing, you know, whatever, let it be. But it's also freeing up yourself to do other things where you can be maybe more successful or more happy. So I think that's actually an amazing piece of advice if you really think more deeply about it, right? If you're, you know, let's say you're on, I don't know, you're on piano lessons and it just doesn't make you happy, you're not good with the piano, you can pursue that for years or you can say, you know what, I give this up and maybe then you focus on something in sports or some other type of instrument and you find out that you can actually be successful there. So I think Being successful is also knowing when to see something, not just knowing what to do.
And my Italian, but in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
Yeah, that's a lifelong question. I'll say I don't really have a single answer to that. I think that's just, in the end, happiness is just really also Yeah, I'd say about being understanding of what you have and appreciating that as well, but not just looking, you know, at whatever is there on, for example, Facebook or Instagram that looks so much better while undervaluing what you already have achieved.
And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
You know, I like— this completely goes away from my industry and business backgrounds. I really like the books of George Orwell, which is, you know, completely different, although I would say a lot of people in the security industry do like 1984. But I particularly also like his— he has one of the books where he describes the situation how people, you know, how poor people lived in Paris and London in, I think this was probably the '20s or so, a time where it could be very difficult. And it gives just a very interesting perspective because most books from that time more focus on the high life and so on. But it's really interesting to actually read also from, you know, personal experiences and views from people that actually have gone through a rough time and how they perceive life.
And what is your favorite quote and why?
I, yeah, so this is the one I don't really have an answer on, and the reason for that is that I am extremely forgetful, so I never really think in quotes. I don't like, I'm more of an analogy and metaphor person, I guess.
Gotcha. Okay. I mean, if you have one of those, you're able and you'd like to share it. If not, then that's fine too. No worries.
Cool.
Awesome, brother. So listen, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. The last question then that I have for you is where's the best place for people to connect with you online?
I think the easy ways are two options. Either, you know, shoot me a quick email or look me up on LinkedIn.
Perfect, brother. Thank you again for joining us.
Cool. Happy to be here.
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