49 episodes listed below
Security news tested against real operations.
Defensive Security Podcast is a long-running security conversation built around current incidents and practical defense lessons. Jerry Bell and Andrew Kellett move from breach mechanics to control design with dry humor, skepticism, and a strong bias toward operational reality.
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Defensive Security Podcast is a seasoned cybersecurity show built around practical interpretation of current security stories. It is not polished futurism. Jerry Bell and Andrew Kellett work through incidents, reports, and industry arguments with the tone of people who have seen enough production environments to distrust easy answers. Recent episodes touch exposed MongoDB instances, ESXI concerns, SonicWall footholds, password dumps, phishing-resistant authentication, passkeys, device enrollment, global admin creation, MDR services, immutable backups, cloud oversight, malicious QR codes, recruiting pitfalls, and the growing pressure to use AI at work. The conversations often begin with a specific article or vulnerability. Then they turn into a broader defensive question: who would notice, who would respond, and what control would still matter when the attacker is already moving? The show is strongest when it examines the gap between security guidance and organizational reality. Legacy systems still exist. Static passwords still create exposure. Alerting can help, but only if teams do not become numb to noise. MDR providers can add coverage, yet they may lack the local business context that makes an alert meaningful. AI is treated with caution rather than novelty worship, especially where corporate workers are pushed toward tools they may not understand. The hosts also spend time on professional formation inside security, including the value of foundational computing skills such as DNS, routing, IP addressing, systems administration, and networking. There is humor throughout. It is dry, sometimes irreverent, and usually aimed at the absurdity of modern work, aging, social platforms, weather panic, or the industry’s appetite for buzzwords. The register is technical but conversational. Defensive Security Podcast works best for defenders, security leaders, IT operators, and experienced technology listeners who want incident discussion tied to real controls, not fear-driven headlines. Its value is the steady return to action: reduce blast radius, watch sensitive changes, challenge convenient assumptions, and understand the systems being protected.
Made for: For security practitioners, IT operators, and technically fluent listeners who want current incidents translated into defensive choices. It especially suits people responsible for identity, infrastructure, cloud exposure, alerting, backups, or security operations.
What sets it apart: The show pairs headline-driven security discussion with skepticism about how controls behave inside actual organizations. Its edge is the practical back-and-forth: not just what happened, but what a defender could monitor, limit, patch, or rethink.
Defensive Security is a weekly information security podcast which reviews recent high profile cyber security breaches, data breaches, malware infections and intrusions to identify lessons that we can learn and apply to the organizations we protect.
A global admin appears at midnight; Jerry Bell and Andrew Kellett ask what should have screamed.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded security discussion about privileged controls, overnight alerts, and the danger of missed administrative changes.
Episode 343 takes a practical security problem and keeps it close to the work: how organizations approve, monitor, and respond to risky administrative changes.
A loose but grounded security conversation about why workplace AI caution may need outside pressure to be heard.
Episode 340 frames the workplace AI boom as a security problem rather than a productivity story. Jerry Ball and Andrew Kellett focus on the pressure to become a "1,000x employee" and the risks corporate users may not see clearly while the tools spread through everyday work.
A candid, practical look at cloud oversight, password risk, AI-assisted crime, and the pressure to move beyond NTLM.
Episode 338 follows security problems that do not stay neatly contained: cloud oversight, password dumps, criminal use of AI, easier access to advanced malware, and the long-running question of whether NTLM has outlived its place.
A practical security episode on MDR judgment, alert fatigue, and why immutable backups must be more than ordinary server storage.
Episode 336 frames defensive security as a matter of judgment once recommended controls run into real-world conditions. The conversation moves from cyber-insurance-driven safeguards and a real victim to a sharper question: whether managed detection and response services truly…
Technology's mechanisms, power's consequences.
Dave, Joe, and Maria break down phishing kits, deepfakes, and social-engineering scams weekly.
Jerry Bowe and Andrew Kalit discuss the potential impact of AI on their careers and joke about being called back to fix AI's mess.
Jerry Bell and Andrew Kellett open Defensive Security Podcast episode 343 by covering a Recorded Future report showing compromised credentials rose roughly 50% in the second half of 2025, with Q4 volumes 90% higher than Q1, and two-thirds tied to enterprise logins like Okta and Azure.
Jerry Bell and Andrew Kellett chat about weather, hiding in closets, and Jerry's return to employment.
Jerry Bell and Andrew Kaelin discuss Andrew's return to work and the loss of freedom that comes with employment.
Jerry Bell and Andrew Kaelin discuss Andrew's return to work and the loss of freedom that comes with employment.
Hosts Jerry Ball and Andrew Kellett cover a Notepad++ website hijack, attributed to a Chinese-linked group called Lotus Blossom, that swapped legitimate update downloads for a remote-access-Trojan-laced installer because Notepad++ had relied on self-signed rather than verified certificates.
Jerry Bell and Andrew Kellett dissect a Register/Cisco report claiming exploited vulnerabilities drove nearly 40% of Q4 2025 intrusions, then push back on how much to trust any single vendor's threat-attribution stats given availability bias and commercial incentive.
Jerry Bell and Andrew Kellett open Defensive Security Podcast episode 338 with a Bleeping Computer story on a pen-testing firm finding nearly 2,000 forgotten instances of intentionally vulnerable web apps like DVWA and OWASP Juice Shop running with privileged IAM credentials inside Fortune 500 cloud accounts at companies including Cloudflare, Palo Alto Networks, and F5, many already compromised for crypto-mining.
Jerry Bell and Andrew Kellett open Defensive Security Podcast episode 337 with a Register story on "quishing," where Pyongyang-linked actors send QR codes in spear-phishing emails that lead victims to fake Microsoft 365, Okta, or VPN login portals designed to steal credentials.
Hosts Jerry Bell and Andrew Kellett dissect Coalition's 2026 cyber-insurance control recommendations, noting phishing payouts jumped from 18% of claims in early 2024 to nearly half in early 2025.
Jerry Bell and Andrew Kellett cover four stories on Defensive Security Podcast episode 335, starting with Kaspersky's research on 15 GitHub repositories distributing WebRAT malware disguised as proof-of-concept exploits for CVEs spanning WordPress, Windows Remote Access Manager, and other software.
Jerry Bell and Andrew Kellett cover a Krebs on Security report that parked domains serving malware jumped from about 5% eleven years ago to roughly 90% today, often using VPN detection to dodge researchers.
Jerry Bell and Andrew Kellett open episode 333 covering a Register-reported 700% jump in hypervisor ransomware attacks, largely driven by the Akira group exploiting unmonitored, EDR-incompatible hypervisor management interfaces.
Jerry Bell and Andrew Kellett open Defensive Security Podcast episode 332 questioning whether phishing defenses have plateaued, citing a Black Hat Europe-bound study finding Office 365 as the top single sign-on phishing target and only 40% of Okta's customer base using phishing-resistant authentication even once a month.
Jerry Bell and Andrew Callett introduce episode 309 of the Defensive Security Podcast, discussing cybersecurity topics and thanking sponsors.
Jerry Bell and Andrew Callit introduce episode 305 of the Defensive Security Podcast, discuss upcoming vacation, and present a sponsor ad for Invisicloak.
Jerry Bell and Andrew Callett open episode 304 of Defensive Security Podcast with banter about the pope and upcoming vacation.
Jerry Bell and Andrew Kellett celebrate episode 300 of the Defensive Security Podcast with banter about skipping the milestone and personal updates.
Jerry Bell and Andrew Callit banter about episode numbers and lighting before a reminder about opinions.