Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_01 (00:02):
Good morning, good
afternoon, or good evening,
whenever you may be, and welcometo a special one-year
anniversary episode of the SockBrief.
This is still your go-to podcastfor staying ahead of the
ever-evolving world ofcybersecurity threats.
I'm your host, Andrew, and todaywe're going to do something a
little bit different.
Instead of me walking throughthe latest threats, hacks, or
(00:24):
cybersecurity news, my colleagueand our show's producer is
joining me to turn the tablesand ask me some questions about
the podcast itself.
Hi, Sam.
How are you?
SPEAKER_00 (00:34):
Hi, good.
How are you?
Thanks for letting me sit in inthis host seat for a little bit.
SPEAKER_01 (00:38):
No, awesome.
I appreciate you joining me.
SPEAKER_00 (00:40):
This is awesome.
I also want to say a specialhello to all the sock brief
listeners out there.
Shout out.
Hi.
So let's, I guess, jump rightin.
My first question I got for youis why did you decide to start
the sock brief a year ago?
SPEAKER_01 (00:55):
Uh, why did we start
the sock brief?
I think a lot of it came down toum there weren't a lot of short
form podcasts out therediscussing cybersecurity news.
There are a lot of greatpodcasts out there talking about
cybersecurity events, you know,hacks that are happening,
(01:16):
vulnerabilities, cool thingsgoing on in cybersecurity, but a
lot of them are hours long.
Um, and you know, not a lot ofpeople have time to sit and
listen to that all in one go, ormaybe you're just invested in
something else, or you startlistening and then you stop
because you had to take a break.
And so our main, you know, ideawith starting the sock brief was
(01:38):
trying to get some bite-sized,tangible, usable information out
that people like you couldlisten to on the way to work,
you know.
SPEAKER_00 (01:47):
100%.
I think you really um hit thenail on the hammer, hammer on
the nail, thing.
Yes, yeah, something like that.
Um, I really do imagine somepeople, you know, just taking
their a walk or their 15-minutebreak and just being able to tap
in and it's just quick, easy,keeps you up to date without
doing too much.
Not saying, you know, sometimesthese hour-long ones, you never
know what's going on.
(02:07):
Yeah.
Um it gives you just moreflexibility.
Yeah, flexibility, versions, ifyou will.
Um, and speaking of, you know,these types of listeners, who
did you picture as your likeideal listener when you first
started?
And how do you think thataudience has like changed over
time?
SPEAKER_01 (02:24):
For sure.
I think the like the main targetaudience, I guess, really is
anyone interested incybersecurity.
Um, just to kind of understandthe ins and outs or kind of
things that we look for or newstories that we're paying
attention to, but mainly socksthemselves, like anyone in a
sock, anyone blue team, uhanyone on the defensive side,
(02:47):
like um, you know, our world,this job is constantly changing.
There's new attacks, there's newattack vectors, there are new,
there's new methods, there's newattackers daily.
Yeah.
Um, and and you know, groupsthat that are around for a long
time today may just becompletely gone tomorrow.
And the same with their attacktechniques.
(03:08):
So um one of the things, youknow, we wanted to make sure we
were doing is um gettinginformation to people that could
use it or would want to use itand learn from it.
SPEAKER_00 (03:22):
100%.
So again, on this path oflisteners and kind of target
audience, what has been the mostsurprising feedback or really
any feedback or reactions thatyou've received from the
audience?
SPEAKER_01 (03:37):
Uh honestly, uh some
of the most surprising is going
to, you know, cybersecurityconferences just around the
country, uh, and just havingpeople recognize the sock brief,
like, oh, you know, hey, Ilistened to that.
Um, and just input or, you know,um just people telling us that
they they love it, like theyenjoy uh the the information
(04:00):
that they get from it, that itadds value, and that they can
take these little like snippetsand go, hey, I didn't know that
was actually going on.
Yeah.
And any recommendation that Imight have, you know, during the
podcast, they might be able totake something out of that and
utilize that in their ownenvironment.
And so that's been pretty cool.
Uh it was actually reallysurprising the first time that
(04:20):
someone was like, Oh, hey, thesock brief.
And I was like, Oh.
SPEAKER_00 (04:24):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (04:24):
Yeah.
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_00 (04:26):
Yeah, that's
awesome.
I really do love how you kind ofinput um key takeaways or maybe
something to work on for thatweek, kind of towards the end of
each episode, because I think ithelps put put it into
perspective or help practice itfor maybe those who um are in
the field who or even I mean, Ilisten to it obviously.
And um just kind of gives me agood base understanding coming
(04:48):
from, you know, not acybersecurity background.
SPEAKER_01 (04:50):
So Right.
And and I think that's like thelearning aspect of it as well,
is you can listen to a story orread an article that tell you,
hey, this crazy new terrifyingattack is happening.
SPEAKER_00 (05:02):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (05:03):
But what do you do
about it?
You know, and like how manypeople writing these clickbait
articles or whatever, like, youknow, are giving you something
tangible, like, hey, yeah, thisis happening, but you can do
something about it.
SPEAKER_00 (05:17):
Yeah, exactly.
I think it's a good um youintertwine it all really well.
I try.
Yes.
You do that.
Um, so kind of pivoting a littlebit, I do want to ask you about
one of your biggest challengesthat you've faced so far, kind
of just producing a weekly, thisweekly, you know, snippet each
week.
SPEAKER_01 (05:36):
Honestly, for me,
it's it's keeping within topics
or or subject matter that Ithink people can actually get
value from.
Um you know, if there's somereally interesting or critical
vulnerability that's popped up,some new zero day, you know,
that's an easy episode.
(05:56):
Um, but that's not always thecase.
And, you know, trying to find,you know, or paying attention to
recent cybersecurity events,like, you know, what APTs are
out there, what certain threatactors are doing, you know, what
new tool sets are beingutilized.
Um, if if you're not out therelooking for that information
(06:17):
itself, um, you know, you maynot know, like, oh, hey, there's
this side load DLL that doesn'tlook too terribly malicious,
what's going on here?
While if you're actually lookingat stuff and you're looking at
these IOCs and and you know, allthis recent activity, you might
be able to go, oh, hey, youknow, I recognize that from
(06:38):
something I read or something Ilistened to.
Yeah.
And so trying to keep eachepisode with that tangible like
value add is probably the thethe biggest challenge there.
SPEAKER_00 (06:50):
Yeah, a hundred
percent.
Well, I guess speaking ofepisodes in general, what has
been your favorite episode ortopic you've covered within this
last year?
SPEAKER_01 (06:59):
The favorite episode
or topic.
I don't know.
Um probably the I hate sayingthis because I don't uh uh the
maybe not uh the most popularone, but uh I really enjoy
having conversations with Kemet.
Yeah.
Uh so bringing him in for likethe CISO perspective on thing,
(07:20):
um, on things, sorry, um is isgreat.
Uh the the guy's just such awealth of knowledge.
And um like if you haven't seena uh Kemet presentation uh or
sat in on a Kemet tabletop, likegetting, you know, 15, 10 or 15
minutes of time out of him isjust like it's like oh, there's
(07:42):
like value add in every singlething he's saying.
Um and so from a sockperspective, you know, I I lean
on him heavily for things.
Uh just kind of getting to sharethat wealth of information he he
has in this short bite side segsegment.
It was just fun.
It's like how much, how muchinformation can we cram into
this short amount of time?
(08:03):
That's probably my my favoriteone.
Um, I also kind of enjoy umdiscussing the um the nation
state ones, like when the USVenezuela stuff was going on,
and currently we have like theUS Iran stuff, uh, just because
it it gets into kind of like theespionage side of things and it
really shifts the focus fromwhat we see a majority of the
(08:28):
time from these threat actorswho are you know motivated by
money and financial gains to uhthey just want to disrupt.
And so that changes thingsdrastically, surprisingly.
Like when your motivation isjust to disrupt, you know,
there's a no-hole bar.
You know, there's no, there's nolike, you know, hey, we're just
(08:49):
gonna ransom you we want money.
It's it's uh, we just want toshut you down.
So it gets interesting.
Uh, but those are those arepretty fun.
I enjoy those.
SPEAKER_00 (08:57):
That's awesome.
Um, so I guess kind of theselast couple of questions kind of
lean more into the advice umaspect of the show.
So what's one piece of adviceyou would give to SOC analysts
or cybersecurity, maybe studentsor early on learners who listen
to the show?
SPEAKER_01 (09:17):
One piece of advice,
man.
That I mean, I think uh theadvice would be different for
maybe each one of those uhgroups.
Uh for someone who's maybe astudent or learning, um I I
would just say be hungry, getout there and look for
information, try to betteryourself wherever you can.
(09:39):
There's all kinds of tools thatyou can utilize out there.
Um maybe build your own homelab, set up a honeypot, you
know, things like that that thatcan help you kind of understand
how those attacks work and howthey unfold.
The other side of it, um, forlike SOCS, like if you're if
you're already in this field andyou're working with the team,
(10:01):
um, communication, I like assilly as it may sound, I you
know, I'm not talking about likego work with a red teamer or go
learn how this you know attackoperates.
But I I just from personalexperience working with other
SOC teams, uh, the lack ofcommunication, especially
outside of the SOC itself, isastounding sometimes.
(10:23):
Um, and it's something that Iharp on almost every episode.
Uh, I know I brought it up amajority of the episodes, but
sharing your findings or sharingum information about new zero
days or attack techniques orphishing campaigns is so
critical to an organization'ssecurity posture.
(10:44):
Um, I mean, it's like, you know,there's some crazy disease out
there and you found a cure to itand you're not telling anyone
about it.
Right.
You know, like I guess maybethat's not a great analogy, but
um being able to shareinformation on like, especially
within the SOC team itself,like, hey guys, be aware, check
out these IOCs that you knowthat are out there.
(11:07):
How do we adjust our existingtools to keep an eye out for
this stuff?
And a lot of times we just findthat like people will just get
that information and make achange, but they're not telling
anyone about it, or they don'tlet, especially C-suite people
who they think like, well, theydon't care about this.
Like, if you want a great way tolike get a raise or prove prove
your worth, start generatingreports about what's happening.
(11:30):
Send those to your C-suitepeople, sit in on those
meetings.
Um, that that probably mybiggest piece of advice there.
SPEAKER_00 (11:36):
Nice.
Yeah, no, I can 100% agree withthat.
Um sorry, let me go throughhere.
I guess I'll ask you one lastquestion.
Um, so if again, it's anotherbig one.
So uh I'll give you this.
But if somebody has neverlistened to the sock brief
before, how would you describethe sock brief in a sentence?
SPEAKER_01 (12:00):
I would just
describe it as a daily uh well,
maybe not daily.
Let's take it back.
I would describe it as a weeklybite-sized cybersecurity news
and strategy podcast.
I think that's I don't know howaccurate that is.
SPEAKER_00 (12:19):
But I think that's
short and sweet.
One sentence, yeah.
Yeah.
Nice.
Well, thank you so much forletting me, you know, kind of
poke and prod and ask some ofthese some of these questions.
I think one year is really cool,really impressive.
I love the the bite-sized umaspect of it.
So I'm excited to continue tosee where it goes than this next
year.
SPEAKER_01 (12:39):
For sure.
And Sam, thank you so much forjoining me on our anniversary
episode here and for all thegreat questions.
Uh, it really has been a greatyear uh for building the SOC
Brief, and I appreciateeverything that you've done to
help uh make that a reality.
Um, and I'm kind of really proudof what we've done together on
this.
So to our listeners, uh, thankyou for being here every week.
(13:03):
Uh your time and attention meana lot to us, and we'll keep
doing our best to deliver theshort practical episodes that
help you do your job and uh stayahead of any kind of threat
that's out there.
Uh so this week, if you've beenmeaning to share an episode with
a colleague or a friend, now'sthe perfect time.
(13:23):
And if you have any feedback orideas for the next year, hit us
up on social media.
And that's a wrap for thisepisode of the Sock Brief.
Uh, keep your eyes open, keepsharpening those skills, and uh
we'll be back next week with abrand new episode.
As always, stay secure outthere.
Bye.
(13:44):
Thank you.
Bye.