Each webinar features an SEI researcher discussing their research on software and cybersecurity problems of considerable complexity. The webinar series is a way for the SEI to accomplish its core purpose of improving the state-of-the-art in software engineering and cybersecurity and transitioning this work to the community. The SEI is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense and operated by Carnegie Mellon University. The SEI Webinar Seri ...
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Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Podcast Series
Members of Technical Staff at the Software Engineering Institute
The SEI Podcast Series presents conversations in software engineering, cybersecurity, and future technologies.
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Discussions with SEI researchers about cyber-related topics of interest
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In these short videos, experts from the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) deliver informative snapshots of our latest research on the changing world of all things cyber. The SEI is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense and operated by Carnegie Mellon University.
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The State of DevSecOps in the DoD: Where We Are, and What’s Next
58:42
58:42
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58:42DevSecOps practices foster collaboration among software development, security, and operations teams to build, test, and release software quickly and reliably. A high-stakes, high-security environment has challenged the implementation of these practices within the Department of Defense (DoD). The DoD Chief Information Officer (CIO) organization part…
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I Spy with My Hacker Eye: How Hackers Use Public Info to Crack Your Creds
57:16
57:16
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57:16Did you know there are 500 million tweets per day? 3 billion monthly active Facebook users? 1 billion LinkedIn members? Are you one of them? In this webcast, Destiney Marie Plaza reveals how a hacker can use seemingly benign public information to customize an attack on a victim by showing a scenario-based attack and demo (using free and open-source…
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The Best and Brightest: 6 Years of Supporting the President’s Cup Cybersecurity Competition
21:40
21:40
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21:40A strong cyber defense is vital to public- and private-sector activities in the United States. In 2019, in response to an executive order to strengthen America’s cybersecurity workforce, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) partnered with the SEI to develop and run the President’s Cup Cyberse…
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A New Performance Zone for Software for National Security
1:02:23
1:02:23
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1:02:23Today, we have seen our national security organizations working to adopt modern software practices, particularly Agile methods and DevSecOps practices, efforts challenged by a mismatch of tempos between operational needs and development processes. The newly mandated Software Acquisition Pathway helps to align those tempos. However, to sustain a com…
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An organization’s cyber risk management practices must be rooted in organizational goals to be truly effective. In this webcast, Matt Butkovic, Greg Crabbe and Beth-Anne Bygum explore how best to align business and resilience objectives.By Matt Butkovic, Greg Crabbe and Beth-Anne Bygum
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Updating Risk Assessment in the CERT Secure Coding Standard
26:04
26:04
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26:04Evaluating source code to ensure secure coding qualities costs time and effort and often involves static analysis. But those who are familiar with static analysis tools know that the alerts are not always reliable and produce false positives that must be detected and disregarded. This year, we plan on making some exciting updates to the SEI CERT C …
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Delivering Next Generation Cyber Capabilities to the DoD Warfighter
27:16
27:16
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27:16In this podcast from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Gregory Touhill, director of the SEI CERT Division, sits down with Matthew Butkovic, technical director of Cyber Risk and Resilience at CERT, to discuss ways in which CERT researchers and technologists are working to deliver rapid capability to warfighters in …
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Cyber Maturity Model Certification (CMMC): Protecting the Nation’s Defense Industrial Base
28:02
28:02
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28:02The Defense Industrial Base (DIB) is a core element of the national security ecosystem. This point of intersection between private industry and the Department of Defense is a perpetual target for the Nation’s adversaries. In this Intersect, Matthew Butkovic and John Haller explore the development, and implementation, of the Cyber Maturity Model Cer…
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Threat Hunting: What Should Keep All of Us Up at Night
57:09
57:09
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57:09When it comes to recognizing threats, cybersecurity professionals may become distracted by big promises or ignore some obvious inspections. New claims made by the latest and greatest new apps draw attention away from network situational awareness best practices—like a dog distracted when it spots a squirrel. We also may deviate from making routine …
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Getting the Most Out of Your Insider Risk Data with IIDES
39:14
39:14
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39:14Insider incidents cause around 35 percent of data breaches, creating financial and security risks for organizations. In this podcast from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute, Austin Whisnant and Dan Costa discuss the Insider Incident Data Expression Standard (IIDES), a new schema for collecting and sharing data about insid…
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Can a Cybersecurity Parametric Cost Model be Developed?
56:25
56:25
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56:25Can a cybersecurity parametric cost estimation model be developed? Every Department of Defense (DoD) program needs to account for, credibly estimate, budget/plan for, and assess the performance of its cybersecurity activities. Creating a cybersecurity parametric model would allow DoD programs to reliably estimate the effort and cost of cybersecurit…
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Grace Lewis Outlines Vision for IEEE Computer Society Presidency
18:14
18:14
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18:14Grace Lewis, a principal researcher at the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and lead of the SEI’s Tactical and AI-Enabled Systems Initiative, was elected the 2026 president of the IEEE Computer Society (CS), the largest community of computer scientists and engineers, with more than 370,000 members around the world. In…
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Elements of Effective Communications for Cybersecurity Teams
34:00
34:00
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34:00Communications, both in times of crisis and during normal operations, are essential to the overall success and sustainability of an incident response or security operations team. How you plan for and manage these communications and how they are received and actioned by your audience will influence your trustworthiness, reputation, and ultimately yo…
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Improving Machine Learning Test and Evaluation with MLTE
29:06
29:06
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29:06Machine learning (ML) models commonly experience issues when integrated into production systems. In this podcast, researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute and the U.S. Army AI Integration Center (AI2C) discuss Machine Learning Test and Evaluation (MLTE), a new tool that provides a process and infrastructure for…
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DOD Software Modernization: SEI Impact and Innovation
27:12
27:12
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27:12As software size, complexity, and interconnectedness has grown, software modernization within the Department of Defense (DoD) has become more important than ever. In this discussion moderated by Matthew Butkovic, technical director of risk and resilience in the SEI CERT Division, SEI director Paul Nielsen outlines the SEI’s work with the DoD on sof…
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Operational Resilience Fundamentals: Building Blocks of a Survivable Enterprise
52:07
52:07
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52:07Surviving disruptive cyber events requires a specific form of planning. One must strike a balance between defending against threats (e.g., managing conditions) and effectively handling the effects of disruption (e.g., managing consequences). Employing a model (such as the CERT Resilience Management Model) provides a catalog of practices and a syste…
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Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) perpetually navigate a dynamic set of challenges. Applying focus and aligning resources is imperative for success. In this Intersect, Matthew Butkovic and Gregory Touhill, reflect on 2024 and explore the topics that should be front of mind for CISOs in 2025. They provide insights and advice for those cont…
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Understanding the Need for Cyber Resilience: A Conversation with Ray Umerley
53:02
53:02
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53:02No organization can comprehensively avoid disruptive cyber events. All must strive to maintain operational resilience during times of organizational stress. Ransomware incidents create disruption that can be fatal to the unprepared. In this webcast, we explore how to maintain operational resilience during a ransomware incident. Experts with varied …
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As the strategic importance of AI increases, so too does the importance of defending those AI systems. To understand AI defense, it is necessary to understand AI offense—that is, counter AI. In this session, Matthew Butkovic, CISA, CISSP, technical director for risk and resilience, and Nathan VanHoudnos, senior machine learning researcher explore t…
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Securing Docker Containers: Techniques, Challenges, and Tools
39:09
39:09
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39:09Containerization allows developers to run individual software applications in an isolated, controlled, repeatable way. With the increasing prevalence of cloud computing environments, containers are providing more and more of their underlying architecture. In this podcast from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Sasa…
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An Introduction to Software Cost Estimation
22:55
22:55
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22:55Software cost estimation is an important first step when beginning a project. It addresses important questions regarding budget, staffing, scheduling, and determining if the current environment will support the project. In this podcast from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Anandi Hira, a data scientist on the SEI…
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Cyber Challenges in Health Care: Managing for Operational Resilience
53:37
53:37
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53:37Health-care organizations are seemingly besieged by a complex set of cyber threats. The consequences of disruptive cyber events in health care are in many ways uniquely troubling. Health-care organizations often face these challenges with modest resources. In this webcast, Matthew Butkovic and Darrell Keeling will explore approaches to maximize ret…
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Independent Verification and Validation for Agile Projects
1:02:23
1:02:23
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1:02:23Traditionally, independent verification and validation (IV&V) is performed by an independent team throughout a program’s milestones or once the software is formally delivered. This approach allows the IV&V team to provide input at the various milestone gates. As more programs move to an Agile approach, those milestones aren’t as clearly defined sin…
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Cybersecurity Metrics: Protecting Data and Understanding Threats
27:00
27:00
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27:00One of the biggest challenges in collecting cybersecurity metrics is scoping down objectives and determining what kinds of data to gather. In this podcast from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Bill Nichols, who leads the SEI’s Software Engineering Measurements and Analysis Group, discusses the importance of cyber…
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3 Key Elements for Designing Secure Systems
36:28
36:28
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36:28To make secure software by design a reality, engineers must intentionally build security throughout the software development lifecycle. In this podcast from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Timothy A. Chick, technical manager of the Applied Systems Group in the SEI’s CERT Division, discusses building, designing, …
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Using Role-Playing Scenarios to Identify Bias in LLMs
45:07
45:07
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45:07Harmful biases in large language models (LLMs) make AI less trustworthy and secure. Auditing for biases can help identify potential solutions and develop better guardrails to make AI safer. In this podcast from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Katie Robinson and Violet Turri, researchers in the SEI’s AI Division,…
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Best Practices and Lessons Learned in Standing Up an AISIRT
38:29
38:29
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38:29In the wake of widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in critical infrastructure, education, government, and national security entities, adversaries are working to disrupt these systems and attack AI-enabled assets. With nearly four decades in vulnerability management, the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI)…
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3 API Security Risks (and How to Protect Against Them)
19:28
19:28
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19:28The exposed and public nature of application programming interfaces (APIs) come with risks including the increased network attack surface. Zero trust principles are helpful for mitigating these risks and making APIs more secure. In this podcast from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI), McKinley Sconiers-Hasan, a solu…
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Evaluating Large Language Models for Cybersecurity Tasks: Challenges and Best Practices
43:05
43:05
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43:05How can we effectively use large language models (LLMs) for cybersecurity tasks? In this Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute podcast, Jeff Gennari and Sam Perl discuss applications for LLMs in cybersecurity, potential challenges, and recommendations for evaluating LLMs.
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Capability-based Planning for Early-Stage Software Development
33:55
33:55
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33:55Capability-Based Planning (CBP) defines a framework that has an all-encompassing view of existing abilities and future needs for strategically deciding what is needed and how to effectively achieve it. Both business and government acquisition domains use CBP for financial success or to design a well-balanced defense system. The definitions understa…
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Safeguarding Against Recent Vulnerabilities Related to Rust
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26:25What can the recently discovered vulnerabilities related to Rust tell us about the security of the language? In this podcast from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute, David Svoboda discusses two vulnerabilities, their sources, and how to mitigate them.
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Generative AI and Software Engineering Education
1:02:05
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1:02:05Within a very short amount of time, the productivity and creativity improvements envisioned by generative artificial intelligence (AI), such as using tools based on large language models (LLMs), have taken the software engineering community by storm. The industry is in a race to develop your next best software development tool. Organizations are pe…
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Developing a Global Network of Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs)
30:51
30:51
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30:51Cybersecurity risks aren’t just a national concern. In this podcast from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI), the CERT division’s Tracy Bills, senior cybersecurity operations researcher and team lead, and James Lord, security operations technical manager, discuss the SEI’s work developing Computer Security Incident R…
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