BALTIMORE — Cybersecurity. It's a topic a lot of us may see on our television screens or newsfeed, but we really don’t know a lot about it.
Well one local company and podcast is making the cybersercurity world just a little bit easier to understand for all of us.
First let's give you a little background into what the CyberWire is all about. It's a company that started out right here in Baltimore, but is now a Howard County based news service that focuses on cybersecurity.
They help deliver content through their various news products in a way that the average person can understand, in an industry that can be sometimes overloaded with information and competing messages.
Their news products are created by experts, writers, and former journalists where people such as professionals, executives, students, and security enthusiasts alike can learn new things and keep up-to-date on an industry that seems to change by the hour.
With that being said, we're focusing on one of the many products the CyberWire has to offer: Podcasts. And which podcast specifically: Hacking Humans.
Hacking Humans is a podcast hosted by Dave Bittner and Joseph Carrigan every week, where they look behind the social engineering scams, phishing schemes, and criminal exploits that are taking place not just here in the United States, but across the world.
So, just a little about the hosts. Joe is a Senior Security Engineer at Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute and when the opportunity came to join Dave on the podcast, he jumped at the chance.
"I was working with them [the CyberWire] from the beginning because they reached out to the Information Security Institute and said 'do you guys have anybody that wants to be on the podcast on a regular basis,'" Joe recalled. "And I said I would love do that."
Dave is a podcast host and producer at the CyberWire where he hosts multiple other podcasts outside of Hacking Humans such as Caveat and Research Saturday to name a few.
And they both actually started out in media before making the pivot into the cybersecurity world.
When you listen to their Hacking Humans podcast, it's undeniable the chemistry Joe and Dave have together. They've known each other for years, but are also very different from one another, which makes the podcast a hit with their listeners.
"We joke with each other, we laugh a lot, and we're different enough where we don't come from the same perspective," Dave said.
They did their first episode in May 2018, and one thing both guys are satisfied with and look to continue doing is being an avenue where anyone can come and listen to their podcast and be informed about a topic that leaves most confused.
"I'm most satisfied with keeping the podcast non-technical. We don't want to baffle the listeners. Anybody can listen to us and understand," Joe said.
And while the guys interview a lot of experts, psychologists, or people/family members that have been scammed in the cyberspace world, their most memorable interview thus far has been with magicians and entertainers Penn & Teller.
How can I listen to that episode and more, you ask?
Well you can subscribe and listen to all of the Hacking Humans podcast episodes by clicking here or by searching Hacking Humans on Spotify or any other podcast listening websites.
WMAR-2 News Reporter Mallory Sofastii was also featured in a recent episode.
Dave and Joe encourage people to check out the podcast and share with friends and family. It's a place where you or the people closest to you may learn something to help better protect themselves from getting scammed.
