A travel advisory page turns a destination country into a risk picture across physical, cyber, geopolitical, and social conditions, with embassy contacts and live incident reports available in the app. Impersonation protection lets a member challenge a suspicious message on a separate channel, and the circle of trust reaches the daycare provider, the private banker, and the key vendor.
Matt Covington, Senior Vice President of Product at BlackCloak, walks through two features recently added to the member application. The first grew out of a question the concierge team fielded often. Members planning family travel to China or Eastern Europe wanted to know what to expect, how to protect their devices, and how to stay safe.
That work now sits inside the app as a travel advisory page. A member types in a destination and the advisory breaks risk into the four categories the intel team uses. Physical security, cybersecurity, geopolitical climate, and social climate. A risk score, click to call contact information for US consulates and embassies, and up to the minute incident reports round out the page.
The second feature is impersonation protection. Matt Covington describes a voicemail from someone claiming to be Chris Pierson, CEO of BlackCloak, asking for wiring instructions to be changed and $5,000 sent to an individual. Replying to that message to ask whether it is really him produces a yes from whoever is on the other end.
Impersonation protection moves the question to a channel the sender did not pick. The member touches a name in the address book, selects the communication channel in question, adds a custom message, and submits. The person being challenged accepts or denies the request through a push notification in the BlackCloak app.
The circle of trust reaches past coworkers and immediate family. Matt Covington names a childcare provider, a personal wealth advisor, a private banker, and a key vendor in the supply chain. Members with impersonation protection can create an unlimited number of invitations, and the person invited does not need to be a fully paid up BlackCloak member to respond.
Much of the deepfake conversation has centered on Zoom, Teams, and other corporate platforms. Matt Covington argues that attackers are more likely to go after the channel they perceive as unprotected, a personal phone number found online or a social media post that accepts a message. For a security team, the question worth asking is where approval authority for a payment actually sits, and whether the verification step reaches the assistant, the advisor, and the vendor contact too.
This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight
GUEST
Matt Covington, Senior Vice President of Product at BlackCloak
On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mecovington/
RESOURCES
Learn more about BlackCloak: https://blackcloak.io
Impersonation Protection with circle of trust announcement: https://blackcloak.io/news-media/blackcloak-extends-deepfake-protection-to-the-executives-entire-trusted-circle/
Member Travel Advisory announcement: https://blackcloak.io/news-media/blackcloak-integrates-real-time-defense-and-intelligence-to-close-the-security-coverage-gap-for-executive-teams/
Are you interested in telling your story?
▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full
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KEYWORDS
matt covington, blackcloak, sean martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand spotlight, black hat usa 2026, digital executive protection, impersonation protection, circle of trust, deepfake, travel advisory, executive travel risk, wire fraud, business email compromise, supply chain risk, concierge cybersecurity, personal cybersecurity
Executives Can Check a Country's Risk and a Caller's Identity From the Same BlackCloak App | A Brand Spotlight Recorded On Location at Black Hat USA 2026 with Matt Covington, Senior Vice President of Product at BlackCloak | Hosted by Sean Martin
[00:00:19] Sean Martin: All right, Matt. How are you?
[00:00:39] Matt Covington: Doing really good. Thanks.
[00:00:40] Sean Martin: Good to see you.
[00:00:41] Matt Covington: Good to see you too.
[00:00:42] Sean Martin: We're here in Vegas for a little Black Hat action.
[00:00:44] Matt Covington: Absolutely.
[00:00:45] Sean Martin: And I wanted to be in the private suite, get all the dirt.
[00:00:50] Matt Covington: The rarefied air.
[00:00:51] Sean Martin: Absolutely. All the cool stuff that BlackCloak is building, and you're releasing, I think, a little preview of stuff coming out.
[00:00:58] Matt Covington: Yeah, absolutely. We're gonna talk about two cool new features we've dropped into the application recently. The first is related to travel advisories. Obviously we offer concierge support to all of our members. One of the most common questions we got from members was, hey, we're planning a family vacation. We're gonna go to China. Maybe they're going to Eastern Europe. What do we need to know? How do we protect our devices? How do we protect ourselves? How do we stay safe? And so our team would go and create these sort of custom travel advisory reports for members and send them out. And so we decided, hey, why not drop that information directly into the BlackCloak application. And so now we have a new travel advisory page that's available in the app. And so if I'm a member, I can go ahead and check out where I'm traveling to. So if I'm gonna go to Spain, we can type in Spain here. You see if we click this, we're gonna get a full travel advisory. Let's get that refreshed. We're gonna get a full travel advisory for Spain. And so one of the things we did, we looked at our intel team, how are they breaking down risk? And so they talk about physical security. They talk about cybersecurity risks, they talk about the geopolitical climate, they talk about the social climate. And so all of the things you might want to be, don't drink the water, concerned about. Well, yeah, exactly. Depending on where you are. And traveling to Spain these days, don't catch on fire. Right. Would be the other very important thing. And so we have all of that information available inside the application. We have a risk score. Best of all, we have contact information for US consulates, US embassies, with a simple click to call feature in here. So again, if I'm in trouble, I can just go ahead and click. It's an iPad so it won't call. But yeah, we can go ahead and allow them to contact the embassy and consulate. And we're also looking, beyond just the general guidance, at what's happening right now. And so again, we can go down and we can provide up to the minute incident reports that help someone understand, well, what is happening right now that has the potential to impact my travel, that has the potential to impact safety of either myself and my family.
[00:03:13] Sean Martin: Right.
[00:03:14] Matt Covington: But again, it's everything from airport shutting down, strike action, all of those things that have the potential to impact my experiences on traveling. We're able to help members with.
[00:03:26] Sean Martin: Right within the app. I love it.
[00:03:27] Matt Covington: Absolutely.
[00:03:28] Sean Martin: Nice one. But also you guys have been up to
[00:03:31] Matt Covington: The other new feature we're here talking about is impersonation protection. Oh. And so that's a really interesting challenge. And so let's say, for example, I get a voicemail and it's somebody claiming to be Chris Pierson, CEO of BlackCloak. Hey, I need you to change the wiring instructions for this vendor. I need you to wire $5,000 to this individual. But how do I know that was actually Chris? And so one of the things that we're allowing somebody to do is really step outside that potentially compromised channel, right? And so how do I know and how do I verify that that was Chris without simply replying to the SMS and saying, hey, is that you? And obviously whoever's on the other end is gonna say, yeah, sure, it's me.
[00:04:13] Sean Martin: Yeah, of course.
[00:04:14] Matt Covington: So again, inside the application, we have a feature, impersonation protection. And so what this allows me to do is to send an impersonation detection request to anybody inside my trusted circle. And so this is not only my coworkers or my immediate family members. One of the great features of impersonation protection, this allows me to invite anybody ahead of time to connect with me. And so, for example, if it's somebody providing childcare for my kids, if it's a personal wealth advisor, private banker, somebody in my supply chain, a key vendor, we can go ahead and get them enrolled in impersonation protection. And as a benefit to BlackCloak members, when they have impersonation protection, they can create an unlimited number of these invites. So I can invite as many people as I need into my circle of trust. So when I get that message, it gives me pause. What I'm able to do, it's simply touch the name in my address book here. I can go ahead and pick the communication channel I'm asking about. I can add a custom message here and then I can go ahead and click submit. And so what's gonna happen is this message goes via secure BlackCloak channel. So we look at that message on the server. If it looks authentic, we pass it on. On the other end, the person who sent me that message, or the person I'm challenging, hey, was that you who sent me this message, they get a push notification in that BlackCloak app. They're able to go in and click, simply accept or deny, to let me know whether it is safe to act on that message.
[00:05:50] Sean Martin: Very cool.
[00:05:51] Matt Covington: Obviously there's a lot being talked about in terms of deepfake detection, adding protection to Zoom, adding protection to Teams and other corporate channels. But reality is the bad guys, they don't care about that, right? They are more likely to attack what they perceive to be the unprotected channel. And so if I'm looking to attack Chris Pierson, CEO, what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna find his personal phone number online. I'm gonna find a social media post that I can engage with to send them a message. And the nice thing about this, it really doesn't matter what communication channel the potential deepfake arrived at, we have a way to send that challenge to request verification.
[00:06:29] Sean Martin: And so this clearly, employee to employee, executive to employee communications, but partners could be part of this as well, right?
[00:06:39] Matt Covington: Yeah, exactly. And that's I think what we realized. Is, it needs to be as valuable as possible. It just needs to work with anyone, and that's really the benefit you're gonna get as a BlackCloak member, is whether it's, again, it can be a daycare provider for my kids, it can be a private banker, it can be whoever it is I'm having these sort of potentially very high value conversations with. So again, we think about this in terms of supply chain risk, right? It could be someone at a key vendor. If I get a message from a vendor saying, hey, we're changing our wiring instructions, we have a new bank, right? I want to be able to use impersonation protection to verify that that message is authentic, without that person necessarily also having to be a fully paid up BlackCloak member.
[00:07:25] Sean Martin: Well, you know, I think people know that we're huge fans of BlackCloak, and all this stuff that you guys do really touches the human element. And yeah. Not much more human than this right here.
[00:07:37] Matt Covington: Exactly.
[00:07:38] Sean Martin: People traveling and interacting with each other. It's fantastic.
[00:07:40] Matt Covington: Well, great.
[00:07:41] Sean Martin: Matt, appreciate you.
[00:07:42] Matt Covington: Pleasure was mine, Sean.
[00:07:43] Sean Martin: Thank you. Thanks for the quick demos. And everybody connect with the BlackCloak team and connect with Matt. Check out the app and get the impersonation and the travel advisory stuff. Protect yourself, protect your loved ones and your employees.
[00:07:56] Matt Covington: Great. I think so.