Join us at the intersection of networking and security! Whether you’re fending off ransomware attacks, securing remote workers, hunting for rogue IoT devices, or gearing up for your latest compliance audit, Packet Protector provides practical information that IT and infrastructure pros can put to work. Every episode covers the latest security headlines and then drills into essential topics to provide technical and strategic insights on wired and wireless network security, access control, cloud security, pen testing and red/blue teaming, security hardware and software, and more. Whether security is your full-time job or one of your many responsibilities, Packet Protector is your go-to cybersecurity resource.
1 hr 16 min
It’s a packed security news roundup. We start with a multi-billion dollar crypto heist, plus a hardware supply chain attack against crypto wallets, and then discuss the PHP fire drill. European grocery stores feel the heat from OT cyber attacks, and Google discovers an OEM was slipping malware past Google’s security checks into Android-based set-top... Read more »
34 min
On today’s Packet Protector we get a good look at HPE Networking’s SRX firewall, including recently updated product families for branch locations. We’ll get an overview of speeds and feeds, and then dig into threat protection capabilities, AI integration, and more. If your firewall fleet is getting long in the tooth and you’re thinking about... Read more »
25 min
On today’s episode we talk about what security teams can learn about OT security from the Death Star. Guest John Burns recaps his CYBR.SEC.CON talk “The Empire Had a SOC — And Still Got Blown Up Twice”. We jump off from this delightfully nerdy framing to get into serious matters around OT security, including problems... Read more »
1 hr 16 min
It’s a packed security news roundup. We start with a multi-billion dollar crypto heist, plus a hardware supply chain attack against crypto wallets, and then discuss the PHP fire drill. European grocery stores feel the heat from OT cyber attacks, and Google discovers an OEM was slipping malware past Google’s security checks into Android-based set-top... Read more »
34 min
On today’s Packet Protector we get a good look at HPE Networking’s SRX firewall, including recently updated product families for branch locations. We’ll get an overview of speeds and feeds, and then dig into threat protection capabilities, AI integration, and more. If your firewall fleet is getting long in the tooth and you’re thinking about... Read more »
25 min
On today’s episode we talk about what security teams can learn about OT security from the Death Star. Guest John Burns recaps his CYBR.SEC.CON talk “The Empire Had a SOC — And Still Got Blown Up Twice”. We jump off from this delightfully nerdy framing to get into serious matters around OT security, including problems... Read more »
34 min
In this double-header episode, JJ and Drew talk with two cybersecurity experts. First up, Jayson E Street talks about how to make security awareness training effective and engaging. Instead of having employees sit through a video or lecture, or get scolded for failing a phishing test, Jayson’s approach, which he calls Silver Teaming, engages employees... Read more »
55 min
Our October news roundup is a boiling cauldron of consternation. The FBI and the Pentagon suffered breaches, serious exploits are targeting network gear, and researchers discover a lone threat actor who successfully hit hundreds of sites with the help of AI agents. Infostealer malware is impersonating brands such as LastPass to trick users into downloading... Read more »
40 min
Sponsor HPE Networking comes to Packet Protector to talk about zero trust inline segmentation. This is a feature available in Juniper switches that can segment LAN traffic using group policy tags without the complexity associated with VXLAN or other segmentation mechanisms. On today’s show we dig into how inline segmentation works, common use cases, how... Read more »
26 min
AI models have proven very effective at finding software vulnerabilities. This has dramatically increased the number of people (and agents) who can find bugs. But the number of experts who can verify and validate those bugs, and write fixes, has stayed exactly the same. On today’s Packet Protector we talk with Trey Ford, Chief Strategy... Read more »
51 min
Today’s Packet Protector is a sponsored show that sits very nicely at the networking/security intersection. Our sponsor is NetCore, which makes the Unimus network configuration management software. Unimus supports network automation, configuration management and backup, change management, and auditing and compliance. We dive into how Unimus provides visibility into both the running config and the... Read more »
54 min
Today we talk about trying and failing. More specifically, guest Keith Tokash wrote a pair of blogs on Packet Pushers about taking, but not passing, the CCIE Security written exam. Failure’s a hard thing to talk about, particularly in this age where every public utterance on LinkedIn feels like it has to document one’s ever-upward... Read more »
59 min
If it feels like everything is on fire, today’s News Roundup will not dispel that feeling. We discuss consumer routers that ship with factory-installed backdoors, US law enforcement agencies shutting down hacking domains, and how a threat actor tied to China is targeting Cisco IOS-XR routers. Android-based auto infotainment systems are susceptible to malware, OpenAI... Read more »
57 min
Coruna and DarkSword are exploit frameworks that have successfully targeted Apple iPhones to steal cryptocurrency and harvest data including messages, email, location data, and browsing history. On today’s show we trace the provenance of these exploits (Coruna was originally developed by a contractor for the US government), their rapid evolution in the cyber underworld, and... Read more »
55 min
If you’ve been spinning up AI tools — Claude Desktop, Cursor, Copilot, and so on — there’s a decent chance that API keys, credentials, and access tokens are sitting in plaintext on your laptop. With MCP, every quickstart guide tells you to paste your credentials right into a config file. That was a bad habit... Read more »
1 hr 2 min
Zack Whittaker is a journalist for TechCrunch and author of the newsletter “This Week In Security.” He recently wrote a post describing how he uses Burp Suite, an open source penetration testing tool, to see what data apps are collecting from users, and what other sites those apps share that data with. Zack joins JJ... Read more »
37 min
Today we’re doing a crossover episode with the folks at Cybr.Sec.Media to talk about CYBR.SEC.CON, a community-driven security conference that JJ and Drew will be attending in Houston, TX September 15 and 16 2026. We talk with conference founders Michael Farnum and Sam Van Ryder about the origins of the event, and get into our... Read more »
1 hr 1 min
Packet Protector uncorks another News Roundup! We talk about attackers capturing hotels’ captive portals to steal Microsoft credentials, and the OpenAI-attacking-Hugging Face story and how it ties into a broader industry effort to keep the US government from blocking access to open weight AI models from China. Nvidia and the Linux Foundation launch separate AI... Read more »
49 min
There’s always been a gap between the discovery of a security issue and the time it takes to remediate. Now AI models can autonomously find weak points and chain together actions to exploit them. How does AI change the notion of “fast enough” for network defense? On today’s sponsored episode we dig into how FireMon... Read more »
1 hr 3 min
Unless you’ve intentionally migrated to all-IPv6, you’re operating in a dual-stack environment. And if you haven’t accounted for v6 in your monitoring and security, you leave yourself open to risks. Today we dig into some of those risks, including VPN breakouts and how attackers can use unmanaged v6 to bypass security tools. Our guest is... Read more »
1 hr 0 min
Drew talks with Joao Soares, Lead IT Security Consultant, about a project Joao undertook to automate firewall rule changes. Firewall changes can be fraught in any environment, but Joao also had to contend with working in the highly-regulated energy sector. They walk through how the project went from proof-of-concept to being widely used in production,... Read more »
50 min
Looks like it’s going to be a long, hot cybersec summer. The latest news roundup covers how Microsoft 365 Copilot got turned into a data exfiltration tool, why the FortiBleed attack is about much more than compromised firewalls, and how North Korea exploited a single npm maintainer account to poison more than a hundred software... Read more »
39 min
Machine identities now outnumber human identities in the enterprise 109 to 1 — and most of them are running without the governance controls you’d never skip for a human employee. Service accounts, API keys, tokens, workload credentials, and a fast-growing population of autonomous AI agents: all of them need access, all of them can be... Read more »
49 min
MACsec (IEEE 802.1AE) encrypts Ethernet frames hop-by-hop at Layer 2 — before traffic even hits IP — making it one of the strongest protections you can put on wire. It’s been in the standards for years, hardware support is widespread, and yet most organizations aren’t running it. JJ and Drew dig into why: the hardware... Read more »
54 min
The Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) is a postmortem of a year’s worth of cyber incidents and breaches, and a snapshot of how well organizations are responding to actual threats. Drew and JJ share highlights from the 2026 installment, including: For the first time, vulnerability exploits top the list for initial access What a... Read more »
40 min
Starting an investigation—be it for troubleshooting, problem diagnosis, threat hunting, incident response, and so on—is fairly straightforward. There’s a question or thesis you’re pursuing, you have logs and data sources to check, and you have tools to deploy. But if you don’t find anything, does that mean there was nothing to find? Are you sure... Read more »
47 min
HPE has announced new features in its Juniper Mist portfolio. On today’s sponsored Packet Protector, we dig into those features, including a dry run option that lets organizations test and refine Network Access Control (NAC) policies before pushing them out, a policy validation feature that can identify shadow NAC rules, and a microsegmentation capability aimed... Read more »
57 min
JJ and Drew unpack an overstuffed suitcase of infosec stories in today’s News Roundup. Microsoft’s Edge password manager stores credentials in plaintext and Microsoft says “Yup”, the Linux kernel takes a one-two punch from Dirty Frag and Fragnesia, and a new industry coalition takes critical infrastructure protection private. A Taiwanese radio enthusiast allegedly brings high-speed... Read more »
44 min
ThreatLocker takes an opinionated approach to Zero Trust. The company, our sponsor for today’s episode, starts with application control. It uses endpoint software that runs on PCs and servers to allow or deny applications to run. It can also monitor and control the behavior of allowed applications. ThreatLocker has extended its platform to include network... Read more »
51 min
In theory, a zero trust initiative seems straightforward: you just need the right tools and maybe some whiteboard sessions to work out the architecture. In practice, our guests note that zero trust “unfolds inside organizations filled with legacy systems, political friction, budget constraints, and competing priorities.” Without accounting for those complications, a zero trust project... Read more »
51 min
A cryptographically relevant quantum computer is, at some point, going to emerge that can crack modern encryption. But we don’t know when, so it’s tempting to set this problem aside. On today’s sponsored episode, we talk about why ignoring Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) isn’t an effective strategy. Sponsor Cisco is here to make the case for... Read more »
21 min
For decades, network and security professionals have adapted to technology change in a piecemeal fashion: a new rule here, an upgrade there, a new product deployment over yonder. On today’s Packet Protector, co-host Jennifer ‘JJ’ Jabbusch makes the case for why several emerging technologies require IT pros to think about security at an architectural level.... Read more »
37 min
Threat actors are behaving more like professional organizations in an effort to launch more effective and profitable attacks. We explore this and other themes from the latest Threat Labs report from HPE, our sponsor for today’s Packet Protector episode. We also look at how older vulnerabilities are still contributing to today’s exploits, why security organizations... Read more »
28 min
In the cybercrime industry, initial access brokers specialize in break-ins. They pick digital locks and slide open electronic windows, and then sell that access to other threat actors who specialize in ransomware, exfiltration, and other crimes. SocGholish is a widely used tool in the access broker toolkit. Typically disguised as a legitimate software update, SocGholish... Read more »
56 min
Firewall policies are the heart of network security, but over time they can become a tangled mess. Rules might be outdated, or conflicting, or fail to address new applications, services, and risks. Add in remote locations and public cloud deployments, and you’ve got a serious headache for security and network teams. On today’s sponsored show... Read more »
56 min
Spending on SASE, which combines SD-WAN and cloud-delivered security, is forecast to nearly triple over the next few years, according to Dell’Oro Group. Today on Packet Protector we talk with that forecast’s author about what’s driving that spending. We also explore how SASE vendors are differentiating, architectural considerations for SASE deployments, pros and cons of... Read more »
44 min
On today’s news roundup we assess the White House’s new US cyber strategy (bellicose, bombastic, and boiler-plate), discuss a cyberattack attributed to Iran that used Windows to wipe thousands of devices, and dig into a Microsoft update on Entra passkeys. JJ isn’t impressed with new research that bypasses Wi-Fi client isolation, corporate spyware gets a... Read more »
43 min
Kyler Middleton, a software developer in the healthcare sector, builds and supports AI bots and AI agents that are now widely used inside the company where she works. Today on Packet Protector, Kyler stops by to talk about how and why she built these tools, how she (and her organization) address the risks these tools... Read more »
52 min
Today we’re going to learn about the care and feeding of a three-headed dog named Kerberos. Developed at MIT and released in 1989, Kerberos is a free, open source authentication protocol that uses cryptographic keys to protect identity data as it crosses a network. Today, Kerberos is the backbone of Windows authentication. We’ll dive into... Read more »
57 min
On today’s show, we pop the lid off of a firewall (figuratively speaking) to understand what’s inside. We talk about how a packet moves through various packet-processing elements inside a firewall, how header analysis and de-encapsulation work, which hardware component has the biggest impact on performance, why stateful inspection still matters in an age of... Read more »
44 min
With the rise of cloud services and SaaS, the browser has become a primary productivity tool. It’s also a primary vector for malware, phishing, identity theft, data leaks, and other risks. On today’s sponsored episode with Palo Alto Networks, we dive into browser security. We discuss risks to the browser and how they differ from... Read more »
51 min
Everything old is new again in today’s Packet Protector news roundup, as a decade-old Telnet exploit resurfaces, and Microsoft unfolds its roadmap to phase out the ancient NTLM protocol. In other news, Google takes down a sprawling residential proxy network, the popular Notepad++ app takes steps to recover from a serious compromise, and a Polish... Read more »
53 min
Operation Technology (OT) and Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are where the digital world meets the physical world. These systems, which are critical to the operation of nuclear power plants, manufacturing sites, municipal power and water plants, and more, are under increasing attack. On today’s Packet Protector we return to the OT/ICS realm to talk about... Read more »
1 hr 10 min
OAuth is a widely used authorization (not authentication) protocol that lets a resource owner grant access to a resource using access tokens. These tokens define access attributes, including scope and length of time. OAuth can be used to grant access to human and non-human entities (for example, AI agents). OAuth is increasingly being abused by... Read more »
1 hr 2 min
The start of a new year is a good time to assess what’s important. We’ve gathered some Packet Protector listeners to talk about their security priorities for 2026 in a roundtable discussion with hosts JJ and Drew. We talk about key risks for 2026, whether those risks have changed since last year, use cases for... Read more »
51 min
Everything old is new again in this Packet Protector news roundup, from end-of-life D-Link routers facing active exploits (and no patch coming) to a five-year-old Fortinet vulnerability being freshly targeted by threat actors (despite a patch having been available for five years). We also dig into a clever, multi-stage attack against hotel operators that could... Read more »
54 min
Our final news roundup for 2025 is a holiday sampler of tasty, chewy (and a few yucky) confections. We look at a years-long exploit campaign that used browser extensions to steal credentials, inject malicious content, and track behavior; tracks ongoing exploits using the React2Shell vulnerability; and debates whether a surveillance camera maker’s pledge to follow... Read more »
46 min
Cloud-based workspaces such as Google Workspace are often the backbone of an organization. But they also face threats from spam and phishing, account takeovers, and illicit access to sensitive documents and files. On today’s Packet Protector we talk with sponsor Material Security about how it brings additional layers of protection to Google Workspace, including email... Read more »
1 hr 2 min
There may be misconfigurations and other problems lurking in your wireless network. From a lack of peer isolation to poor segmentation to RADIUS problems and vendor fails, these issues can make your WLAN less secure. Jennifer “JJ” Minella goes from Packet Protector co-host to guest as she discusses these issues with Drew Conry-Murray. This episode... Read more »
44 min
Web applications have always been tricky to protect. They’re meant to be accessible over the Internet, which exposes them to malicious actors, they’re designed to take end-user inputs, which can be manipulated for malicious purposes, and they often handle sensitive data. Then the rise of public cloud and microservices architectures added new layers of complexity... Read more »
46 min
Just what’s inside that commercial software you bought? Does it contain open-source components, NPM packages, or other third-party code? How could you find out? The answer is a Software Bill of Materials, or SBOM, a machine-readable inventory of a finished piece of software. Why should you care about SBOMs? Our guest, Natalie Somersall, is here... Read more »
44 min
Certificates are the socks of IT—everyone needs them, and you always lose track of a few. On today’s show we dive into the ACME protocol, an IETF standard to help automate how a domain owner gets a domain validation certificate from a Certificate Authority (CA). Our guest, Ed Harmoush, a former network engineer with AWS... Read more »
52 min
Did you know college students are snooping on satellite transmissions? On today’s news roundup we discuss new research in which university investigators use off-the-shelf equipment to intercept traffic from geostationary satellites and discover that a lot of it is unencrypted. We also dig into the credential hygiene lessons we can learn from a corpus of... Read more »
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