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Every incident is a learning opportunity, and the final step of the response lifecycle—lessons learned—ensures that your team emerges stronger, smarter, and better prepared. In this episode, we explore how to conduct structured post-incident reviews that examine not just what happened, but how and why it happened, how the team responded, and what can be improved. This includes identifying gaps in detection, communication failures, delayed responses, or missing playbooks, as well as documenting which controls were effective. We also cover how to update your incident response plan, inform ...

Once risks are identified and analyzed, organizations must decide how to respond—and in this episode, we examine the five primary risk management strategies: mitigate, transfer, accept, avoid, and exempt. Mitigation involves applying controls to reduce risk impact or likelihood, such as enabling MFA or installing endpoint protection. Transferring risk often involves insurance or outsourcing functions to vendors with specialized capabilities and contractual safeguards. Acceptance applies when the cost of mitigation outweighs the threat, provided the risk is well understood and formally ...

Firewalls are often the first line of defense—but they’re only as effective as the rules, architecture, and tuning behind them. In this episode, we explore advanced firewall configurations, including layered rule sets, port and protocol filtering, application awareness, and geographic blocking. We discuss the use of stateful inspection, deep packet inspection (DPI), and integration with threat intelligence feeds that enable firewalls to recognize malicious patterns in real time. Firewalls can also serve as traffic shapers and segmenters, helping to enforce internal access controls, isolate...

Building on the first part of our automation series, this episode explores how security automation improves scalability, incident reaction time, and team productivity. We examine real-world examples where automated alerts trigger isolation of infected systems, revoke compromised credentials, or update firewall rules within seconds—long before a human analyst could intervene. Automation enables systems to scale securely by enforcing templates, access policies, and configuration baselines across hundreds or thousands of assets, even in fast-moving cloud environments. We also touch on workforce...

Security automation offers more than just saved time—it fundamentally transforms how teams operate by embedding consistency, speed, and scalability into their daily processes. In this episode, we cover the benefits of automation in efficiency and standardization, highlighting how routine tasks like user onboarding, policy enforcement, patch verification, and incident alerting can be executed instantly and without error. We discuss how automation reduces reliance on human memory and tribal knowledge, allowing for repeatable processes that function across shifts, teams, and platforms. ...

Before you can secure access, you have to know who’s requesting it—and identity proofing ensures that the person behind a login is who they claim to be. In this episode, we explore identity proofing methods used during onboarding and remote authentication, including document verification, biometric validation, third-party attestation, and knowledge-based authentication. These techniques form the foundation of trust in both physical and digital identity systems, especially in regulated environments. We also discuss identity federation, which enables a single identity to be used across ...

Beyond encryption, organizations have additional tools to secure data in contexts where usability, compliance, or performance requirements call for alternatives. In this episode, we explore hashing, tokenization, and data masking—each serving a unique purpose in reducing data exposure while supporting operations like analytics or software testing. Hashing protects integrity and is commonly used for password storage and verification, using algorithms like SHA-256 or bcrypt to create one-way representations that can’t be reversed. Tokenization replaces sensitive fields with random or ...

Monitoring is the heartbeat of any modern security operation, providing real-time visibility into systems, applications, and infrastructure. In this episode, we explore how organizations monitor computing resources for both performance and security, using tools like agents, collectors, log forwarders, and telemetry APIs. We discuss the difference between host-based and network-based monitoring, and how to build a centralized view through Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platforms. The focus is on both proactive and reactive monitoring—identifying anomalies before they become ...

A growing portion of cybersecurity risk now comes from outside the organization—specifically, through third-party vendors, suppliers, and service providers. In this episode, we examine how to assess and manage vendor risk across the full lifecycle, starting with due diligence during procurement and continuing through onboarding, monitoring, and offboarding. We explore how to evaluate vendors based on their security policies, compliance certifications, breach history, and contract terms—especially service-level agreements (SLAs) and right-to-audit clauses. Supply chain security goes beyond ...

When assets reach the end of their lifecycle, they don’t just disappear—they become potential liabilities if not securely decommissioned. In this episode, we explore the processes and tools used for secure asset disposal, including data sanitization, cryptographic wiping, degaussing, and physical destruction. We also discuss how improperly retired systems—like old servers, network devices, or hard drives—can leak sensitive data or provide backdoor access to an otherwise secure network. A good decommissioning policy includes clear documentation, ownership verification, and post-disposal...

Data privacy is no longer just a legal issue—it’s a global business imperative, and this episode explores the complex and evolving landscape of privacy laws. We cover key regulations such as the European Union’s GDPR, California’s CCPA, Brazil’s LGPD, and other region-specific rules that govern how personal data is collected, processed, stored, and transferred. These laws define roles like data controller and data processor, outline user rights such as data access or deletion, and impose significant penalties for non-compliance. We also explain how organizations can align with ...

Backups are only half of the story—the other half is how effectively you can recover from them. In this episode, we focus on data recovery techniques that turn dormant backups into operational systems, covering strategies such as replication, journaling, point-in-time recovery, and bare-metal restoration. We define and differentiate between Recovery Time Objective (RTO)—how quickly you need to be back online—and Recovery Point Objective (RPO)—how much data loss is acceptable—explaining how these shape the choice of recovery tools and processes. Journaling captures changes in real ...

When a security incident occurs, understanding what happened—and proving it—requires digital forensics. In this episode, we cover foundational concepts of digital forensics, including data acquisition, chain of custody, preservation, and documentation. Acquiring data from endpoints, servers, or cloud environments must be done carefully to avoid altering evidence, while maintaining chain of custody ensures that every step of handling is logged and defensible in court. We explore the importance of write-blockers, forensic images, and hashing to preserve integrity, and discuss where forensic ...

Security must adapt to the architecture of the environment it protects, and that starts with understanding how infrastructure is organized. In this episode, we compare on-premises, centralized, and decentralized architectures, explaining the security implications of each. Centralized models offer streamlined control, simpler updates, and more consistent enforcement—but they also concentrate risk in a single point of failure. Decentralized architectures distribute resources and decision-making, improving resilience but making visibility, auditing, and access management more complex. On-prem ...

Traditional perimeter security isn’t enough in a world of mobile users, cloud resources, and third-party integrations. In this episode, we explore advanced secure access solutions, starting with Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN), which replaces traditional WAN technologies with application-aware routing and policy-based control across diverse internet paths. SD-WAN not only improves performance but enhances security by segmenting traffic and enforcing encryption between endpoints. We then examine Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), which merges SD-WAN with cloud-delivered ...

Procedures and playbooks are the operational backbone of a mature security program—translating policy into detailed, repeatable steps for responding to specific threats or performing security tasks. In this episode, we explain the difference between general procedures (e.g., user onboarding or access review) and incident-specific playbooks (e.g., malware containment or phishing investigation). Playbooks are especially valuable in reducing response time and minimizing errors during high-stress situations by guiding responders through proven workflows. We discuss how to build, test, and ...

Not all data is meant for human eyes, and in cybersecurity, understanding the distinction between human-readable and non-human-readable data formats is vital for applying the right protection. This episode explains how human-readable data—like documents, emails, or spreadsheets—poses a higher risk of exposure and misuse when accessed by unauthorized users, and must often be protected with strong access controls, encryption, and data loss prevention (DLP) tools. Non-human-readable data includes binary files, machine logs, compiled code, and metadata—often overlooked, but still sensitive ...

Monitoring is most valuable when it drives action, and in this episode, we explore foundational activities that turn data into defense—starting with log aggregation, alerting, and scanning. Log aggregation involves collecting logs from diverse systems—servers, firewalls, applications, cloud platforms—into a central platform for correlation and analysis. Alerting systems evaluate these logs in real time, flagging deviations from normal behavior based on thresholds, signatures, or heuristics. We also examine the importance of routine vulnerability scanning to proactively identify ...

Cybersecurity isn’t just about blocking attacks and managing firewalls. It’s also about building policies, assessing risk, managing vendors, and aligning security with the overall goals of the business. That’s the focus of Domain Five: Security Program Management and Oversight. This domain gives you the big-picture understanding of how security fits into the way organizations function. It teaches you to think beyond the keyboard and start connecting what happens in the server room to what matters in the boardroom.Domain Five accounts for 20 percent of the Security Plus exam. That makes ...

Finding vulnerabilities is only useful if you have a plan to fix them—and this episode dives into the critical processes of response and remediation. We begin with patching, one of the most effective and often underutilized defenses in cybersecurity. Timely and tested patch application is essential for operating systems, applications, firmware, and even cloud services, yet many organizations struggle to keep pace with updates. We also explore alternative remediation strategies like configuration changes, software upgrades, and user permission adjustments that address vulnerabilities when ...