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.