Bare Metal Cyber

In this audio edition of Cyber Leadership in the Age of AI Coworkers, we explore what changes when artificial intelligence (AI) stops being a sidecar and starts acting like part of your team. As coding assistants, ops copilots, and AI agents shape code, incidents, and risk narratives, leaders are left with a harder question than “where can we use AI?”—they have to decide how much agency to grant these systems and how to stay accountable for their decisions. This narration is designed for security and technology leaders who already see AI in their workflows and need a clearer mental model for owning the risk.Across this episode, we walk through the key moves from the Wednesday “Headline” feature in Bare Metal Cyber Magazine. You will hear how the shift from tools to teammates changes basic assumptions about identity, access, and logs; why giving AI coworkers distinct “badges” and lifecycles matters; and how human over-delegation shows up as quiet erosion of judgment. We also dig into what real guardrails look like in architecture and process, and how to lead the culture shift so AI coworkers extend human judgment instead of replacing it.

Threat-informed defense can feel abstract until you connect it directly to how real attackers move through your environment. In this narrated breakdown, we walk through how to use the MITRE ATT&CK framework (ATT&CK) as a practical map for planning security improvements. You will hear plain-language explanations of what threat-informed defense is, where ATT&CK fits in a modern stack, and how to use tactics and techniques as the backbone for a more focused roadmap. The goal is to help you see past marketing labels and start thinking in terms of concrete attacker behaviors you can actually see, block, and respond to.From there, the episode moves into everyday use: how teams use ATT&CK to organize detections, tune alerts, sharpen incident response, and align architecture changes with real threat scenarios. We talk through quick wins for smaller teams, deeper program ideas for more mature environments, and the real benefits, trade-offs, and limits of this approach. You will also hear common failure modes, like “matrix theater,” and the healthy signals that show threat-informed defense is truly driving decisions. The narration is developed from my Tuesday “Insights” feature in Bare Metal Cyber Magazine so you can listen, reflect, and bring the ideas back to your own environment.

CompTIA A+ is where an interest in tech turns into real-world IT support skills that employers can see and trust. In this Monday “Certified” episode developed by Bare Metal Cyber, we break down how A+ proves you can handle everyday devices, operating systems, and networks when real users are stuck and the clock is ticking. You’ll hear how the two Core exams map to the work of help desk and desktop support, why performance-based questions matter so much, and how solid troubleshooting habits set you up for roles in both IT operations and entry-level cybersecurity. Whether you’re aiming for your first help desk job, pivoting into tech from another field, or laying the groundwork for future security certifications, this walkthrough gives you a clear picture of what A+ really tests and how it fits into a longer career path. Tune in to turn “good with computers” into a credentialed, job-ready story.

When your identity data stops matching reality, every dashboard and control you rely on starts to wobble. In this audio edition of “Identity Bankruptcy: When Your Organization Runs Out of Trust,” we walk through what it looks like when a mature organization quietly runs out of confidence in its own answers to “who is this” and “what should they be able to do.” The episode unpacks identity debt, the idea of an “identity balance sheet,” and the ways mergers, SaaS sprawl, and rushed cloud programs corrode trust long before a breach hits the news. This narration is based on the Wednesday “Headline” feature from Bare Metal Cyber Magazine. You will hear a leader-focused walkthrough of the key sections of the article: how organizations drift into identity bankruptcy, what happens when trust signals stop making sense, and how to restructure the “identity economy” without stalling business transformation. We dig into practical leadership moves like setting identity “credit limits,” planning write-offs of legacy identity debt, and choosing a small set of metrics that actually describe identity health to boards and regulators. If you are responsible for risk, architecture, or trust at scale, this episode gives you language and mental models to challenge the state of identity in your own environment.

When a security alert fires, what really happens in those first few minutes? This narrated edition of our Tuesday “Insights” feature in Bare Metal Cyber Magazine walks through the real work of alert triage, from the moment a signal lands in the queue to the decision to close, monitor, investigate, or escalate. You will hear how triage fits into the wider security operations flow and why it acts as the front door to incident response rather than just another tool screen to stare at.The episode also explores everyday use cases, quick wins for small or overworked teams, and deeper ways to use triage outcomes as data to tune detections and refine processes. Along the way, it highlights the genuine benefits of strong triage, the trade-offs and limits you should expect, and the failure modes that show up when alert handling slips into chaos. It is developed by Bare Metal Cyber to give you a grounded, vendor-neutral view of turning noisy alerts into clear security decisions.

This episode takes you inside the CompTIA Network+ (Network+) certification from an early-career point of view, focusing on what the credential actually means for people who live in and around day-to-day IT work. You will hear a clear walkthrough of what Network+ covers, the kinds of environments it is built for, and how it helps you move from basic support tasks toward understanding real infrastructure. We unpack what the exam really tests, how the domains translate into everyday scenarios, and the type of thinking that leads to better answers when you are faced with incomplete or confusing network symptoms. The narration is drawn from my Monday “Certified” feature in Bare Metal Cyber Magazine, so you are getting a structured, article-quality tour in audio form. You will also hear how Network+ can shape your long-term roadmap, whether you want to become a network engineer, a systems administrator, or a cybersecurity professional who needs strong network fundamentals. We talk about where the certification usually fits in a broader path, how hiring managers tend to view it, and why combining it with hands-on practice is so powerful. Along the way, you will get practical guidance on building a simple, sustainable study plan and using everyday troubleshooting as prep. If you want to go beyond this overview, there is a full audio course for Network+ inside the Bare Metal Cyber Audio Academy that lets you keep learning during commutes, workouts, or any time you are away from the keyboard.

In this episode, we unpack how AI helpdesks and support copilots are quietly becoming a new social engineering surface. Instead of just worrying about phishing human agents, leaders now have to think about attackers shaping what the model believes, what it reveals, and which workflows it triggers. We walk through how these AI front doors are wired into ticketing, HR, and identity systems, why that turns them into privileged brokers, and where prompt injection, context hijacking, and over-helpful responses start to bend your trust boundaries. The narration is based on a Wednesday “Headline” feature from Bare Metal Cyber Magazine.From there, we move into the leadership decisions that will determine whether your copilot stays an asset or drifts toward becoming a co-conspirator. You will hear how deterministic policies collide with probabilistic model behavior, how the helpdesk trust contract needs to be rewritten for an AI-first front line, and what it means to design secure copilots from the start. We close by looking ahead at a world where attackers bring their own AI agents to probe your helpdesk at scale, and we offer a practical lens for constraining authority, improving observability, and keeping high-risk actions anchored in strong identity and human verification.

In this episode of Bare Metal Cyber’s Tuesday “Insights” feature, we unpack how security logs, events, and alerts can move from noisy fragments to a clear, trustworthy security story. You’ll hear a plain-language walkthrough of what each layer really is, where it fits across identity, network, endpoint, and cloud, and how they work together as a narrative pipeline. We follow a small end-to-end example so you can picture how scattered records turn into a coherent incident timeline instead of a pile of disconnected clues on a dashboard.The narration, developed by Bare Metal Cyber from our Tuesday “Insights” feature in Bare Metal Cyber Magazine, also explores everyday use cases, from quick-win coverage around logins and admin changes to deeper applications in threat hunting and post-incident reviews. You’ll hear about the real benefits of treating your data as a story, the trade-offs in storage, tuning, and skills, and the failure modes that lead to alert fatigue and missing chapters. By the end, you’ll have a practical mental model you can apply the next time you open your SIEM or XDR console and need to explain “what actually happened” with confidence.

When you see “AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner” on a resume, what does it really tell you about that person’s cloud skills? In this Monday “Certified” episode, we unpack the CCP as Amazon’s foundational cloud credential and look at what it actually proves for early-career tech and security professionals, as well as career changers trying to break into cloud. You’ll hear how CCP fits into the bigger AWS certification ladder, where its limits are, and why it has become a common gateway into cloud roles. We also walk through what the exam really tests: high-level cloud concepts, core AWS services, shared responsibility for security, and how pricing and billing work in the real world. Along the way, you’ll get a practical study roadmap that fits around a full-time job, plus tips for using hands-on labs and practice questions without burning out. If cloud is on your roadmap and you want a structured, honest starting point, this conversation will help you decide whether CCP is worth your time and how to get the most value from it.

In this episode, we dig into what happens when your most important artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities come from models, copilots, and APIs you did not build yourself. Instead of debating algorithms, we follow the path leaders actually live with: opaque upstream providers, shifting model behavior, and sensitive data flowing through black boxes that now sit squarely in the middle of critical business processes. You will hear how model lineage, training data choices, and vendor change control quietly shape the risk your organization ends up owning.We walk through the key sections of the Headline article: reframing accountability for external AI, mapping the real model supply chain behind “we just call an API,” examining concrete failure patterns, and turning vendor due diligence into questions about behavior rather than just infrastructure. From there, we explore how to wrap these external systems with your own guardrails, monitoring, and kill switches, and what a realistic operating model for AI supply chain risk looks like. This narration is based on Bare Metal Cyber Magazine’s Wednesday “Headline” feature, “Model Supply Chain Mayhem: Securing the AI You Didn’t Build Yourself.”

Security controls are often described as policies, tools, and processes, but in practice they shape how your defenses behave before, during, and after an incident. In this audio walkthrough, we break down the major types of controls in clear, practical terms: preventive controls that try to stop bad things from happening, detective controls that help you see what slipped through, corrective controls that support recovery, and supporting types like directive, deterrent, and compensating controls. You will hear how these categories span people, process, and technology, and why a balanced mix matters more than the sheer number of tools in your environment.Across two short segments, the episode walks through what these control types are, where they fit in a typical security stack, how they work together in realistic scenarios, and what benefits and trade-offs each category brings. We also highlight common failure modes such as shallow adoption, lopsided focus on prevention, and “alert museum” monitoring, then contrast them with healthy signals like tested recovery steps and clear ownership. This narration is based on my Tuesday “Insights” feature from Bare Metal Cyber Magazine, so you get the same vendor-neutral, plain-language explanations in a format you can listen to on the move.

Risk is where business decisions collide with real technology limits, and ISACA’s Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC) sits right in that intersection. In this Certified Monday episode from Bare Metal Cyber, we break CRISC down for early-career security, audit, IT, and GRC professionals who want to move beyond tickets and tools and into risk conversations that actually shape what the business does next. You’ll hear what CRISC holders really do day to day, how the four domains link governance, risk assessment, response, and technology, and why this certification pairs so well with technical and audit-focused credentials. We also walk through exam structure, realistic difficulty, and a practical way to prepare so the question bank feels like a structured review of scenarios you already recognize from work, not a pile of disconnected trivia.If you are starting to touch risk registers, control testing, or audit support and you want a clearer roadmap into risk and information systems control, this episode gives you the language, context, and next steps to make CRISC a smart move in your career. Developed by Bare Metal Cyber.

In my latest Cyber Talks session, developed by BareMetalCyber.com, I sat down with Tapan Deka, assistant professor at Madhavi Skills University, to explore something most cybersecurity leaders feel every day but rarely name: marketing. Not marketing in the agency sense, but the way we “package” our security products, services, and programs so people actually adopt them. In the conversation above, Tapan walks through the classic Four Ps of Marketing—product, price, place, and promotion—and shows how directly they apply to cybersecurity strategy and day-to-day security leadership. If you’ve ever wondered why a technically brilliant security solution still struggles to gain traction, this discussion is worth hitting play on.

In this narrated edition of Ghosts in the Training Data: When Old Breaches Poison New AI, we explore how years of incidents, leaks, and scraped datasets quietly shape the behavior of your most important models. You will hear how stolen code, rushed hotfixes, crooked incident logs, and brokered context move from “someone else’s breach” into the background radiation of modern AI platforms. This Wednesday “Headline” feature from Bare Metal Cyber Magazine focuses on leaders’ concerns: trust, accountability, and how much control you really have over the histories your models learn from. The episode walks through the full arc of the article: how breaches refuse to stay in the past, how contaminated corpora become ground truth, and how defensive AI built on crooked histories can miss what matters. It then shifts to business AI running on stolen or opaque context, before closing with a practical framing for governing training data like a supply chain. Along the way, you will get language to talk with boards, vendors, and internal teams about data provenance, model risk, and the leadership moves that turn invisible ghosts into visible dependencies you can actually manage.

Defense in depth is one of those phrases everyone uses, but few teams can clearly describe in terms of everyday work. In this narrated edition of our Tuesday “Insights” feature from Bare Metal Cyber Magazine, we walk through defense in depth as a practical security design pattern rather than a slogan. You’ll hear how it fits across identity, network, endpoint, and cloud, and why it’s really about combining people, process, and technology so that no single miss turns into a major incident. The episode also explores how defense in depth works in real environments: from phishing and remote access to cloud and application security. We look at common use cases, where layering gives you quick wins with the tools you already own, and where deeper investment pays off over time. You’ll also hear honest discussion of trade-offs, limits, and failure modes, along with healthy signals that your layers are truly supporting each other instead of just multiplying dashboards.

This episode walks through the CompTIA Cybersecurity Analyst (CySA+) certification in clear, practical terms for early-career defenders. You will hear what CySA+ actually is, who it is built for, and how it turns scattered experience with alerts and logs into a more deliberate analyst mindset. We dig into the exam’s real focus on threat detection, vulnerability management, and incident response, drawing on the same structure as my Monday “Certified” feature in Bare Metal Cyber Magazine so the ideas build step by step without jargon getting in the way. You will also hear how CySA+ fits into a broader career path, whether you are coming from Security+, general IT, or a help desk role that is drifting toward security operations. Along the way, the narration highlights how hiring managers tend to read CySA+ on a resume, common misconceptions about the exam, and simple strategies for building confidence with scenarios and performance-based questions. If you want to go deeper, you can expand this overview with the full audio course for CySA+ inside the Bare Metal Cyber Audio Academy.

In this episode, we break down the reality of the SOC Pager Olympics—the endless cycle of 3 a.m. wake-ups triggered by false alarms. You’ll hear how misconfigured thresholds, duplication storms, and phantom anomalies turn vigilance into chaos. We’ll explore the human cost of sleep disruption, from cognitive fog to burnout, and reveal why culture and leadership are just as critical as detection rules. Along the way, you’ll learn how to separate signals from noise, define what truly deserves a page, and restore trust in the systems meant to protect.By listening, you’ll sharpen your ability to design sustainable on-call practices, strengthen detection engineering skills, and build empathy-driven leadership that respects human limits. You’ll also gain practical tools for measuring alert quality, enriching notifications with context, and fostering psychological safety in SOC teams. This is more than an exploration of alert fatigue—it’s a roadmap to building stronger, healthier defenders.Produced by BareMetalCyber.com.

When your network still feels like one big open floor plan, a single compromised device can turn into a building-wide fire. In this audio companion to my Tuesday “Insights” feature from Bare Metal Cyber Magazine, we walk through network segmentation in clear, practical language. You’ll hear what network segmentation really is, where it fits in modern hybrid environments, and how it changes the way traffic moves between users, servers, and sensitive systems. The goal is not theory for its own sake, but a working mental model you can carry into your next design review, incident call, or architecture conversation.We also explore how segmentation patterns show up in everyday environments, from simple user-versus-server separations to tighter zones around high-value applications and data. Along the way, we look at the benefits and trade-offs, including the design effort, operational overhead, and hard limits segmentation cannot solve on its own. You’ll hear common failure modes like “any-to-any” rules and rule sprawl, as well as healthy signals that your segmentation is actually slowing attackers down. If you work in security, IT, or cloud operations, this walkthrough gives you a straight-talking guide to making flat networks more defensible.

This episode walks you through the PCI Professional (PCIP) certification in clear, everyday language. We start with what PCIP is designed to prove, why it matters for anyone working around payment card data, and how it fits into the wider world of PCI DSS. From there, we talk about who this certification is really for across security, IT, audit, and payments roles, and what it means to be able to “speak PCI” in meetings, projects, and assessments. The narration is based on my Monday “Certified” feature from Bare Metal Cyber Magazine, adapted for audio so you can follow along without needing the article in front of you. You will also get a guided tour of what the PCIP exam actually tests, the kinds of scenarios you can expect, and how the certification fits into a longer-term career path that might include other security, audit, or compliance credentials. We connect domains, scope, controls, and evidence in a way that makes sense if you are early in your journey but already working with real systems and teams. If you want to go further, you can dive into the full PCI Professional (PCIP) audio course inside the Bare Metal Cyber Audio Academy for deeper, structured exam prep.

In this episode, we strip away the noise surrounding Software Bills of Materials and reframe them through a fresh lens: allergens. Instead of drowning in endless dependency lists, you’ll learn how to identify the handful of components that can actually break your security posture—known exploited vulnerabilities, crypto and authentication stacks, choke-point libraries, abandoned projects, legal traps, and poisoned registries. We explore how VEX, exploit likelihood, and reachability shrink the noise, and we break down the concept of the minimal-viable SBOM, a leaner approach designed to deliver clarity instead of compliance fatigue.By listening, you’ll sharpen your ability to prioritize real risks over theoretical ones, master how to integrate context like VEX into security workflows, and recognize legal and build-system obligations before they cause damage. You’ll walk away with practical skills for producing SBOMs people will actually use, crafting reports tailored to different audiences, and focusing on trust-building clarity rather than overwhelming volume. Produced by BareMetalCyber.com.