Bare Metal Cyber

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.