Defensive Security Podcast

Jerry Bell and Andrew Kalat's long-running independent podcast on incident response, defensive operations, and the working blue-teamer's perspective on news. Active since 2014, deeply unpolished in production, deeply substantive in content.

Who it's for

Working blue-team practitioners — IR responders, SOC leads, detection engineers — who want the perspective of people whose day job is actually defending. Bell and Kalat have decades of in-the-trenches experience and the show's value is the ground-level view it provides.

Who it's not for

Listeners wanting polished production. The show is two friends on a Skype call talking shop; this is a feature for some listeners and a deal-breaker for others. Also wrong if you want offensive-security content — this is unapologetically blue.

Key takeaways

• The show's longevity and consistency means it has covered nearly every major incident of the past decade from the defender's perspective; the back catalog is the resource.
• Bell's CISO-level career and Kalat's hands-on consulting practice produce a useful split-perspective dynamic that most security podcasts don't have.
• The honesty about defender frustrations — the unfunded mandates, the vendor-pitch fatigue, the regulatory absurdities — is the show's underrated edge.

Notes

Pair with Risky Business for the broader news register and with Click Here for the long-form journalism complement. Bell's other writing at jerrygamblin.com and Kalat's at andrewkalat.com are the natural follow-ups. Strongly recommended for anyone whose actual job is defending a network, especially the people who feel the security industry doesn't talk to them enough.