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.