Software enables our way of life, but market forces have sidelined security concerns leaving systems vulnerable to attack. Fixing this problem will require the software industry to develop an initial standard for creating software that is secure by design. These are the findings of a recently released paper coauthored by Greg Touhill, director of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) CERT Division. In this latest SEI podcast, Touhill and Matthew Butkovic, director of Cyber Risk and Resilience...
Jul 14, 2025•32 min
A January 2025 Defense Innovation Board study on scaling nontraditional defense innovation stated, “We must act swiftly to ensure the DoD leads in global innovation and competition over AI and autonomous systems – and is a trendsetter for their responsible use in modern warfare." In this podcast from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI), chief technical officer Tom Longstaff discusses the SEI’s long-standing work to help the DoD rapidly scale technology including a...
Jun 18, 2025•21 min
Warfighters in the Department of Defense (DoD) operate in high-stakes environments where security, efficiency, and speed are critical. In such environments DevSecOps has become crucial in the drive toward modernization and overall mission success. A recent study led by researchers at the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI) examined the state of DevSecOps within the Department of Defense. In this podcast, Eileen Wrubel, the SEI’s Transforming Software Acquisition Polic...
Jun 04, 2025•44 min
Deploying cloud-centric technologies such as Kubernetes in edge environments poses challenges, especially for mission-critical defense systems. In this podcast from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Patrick Earl, Doug Reynolds, and Jeffrey Hamed, all DevOps engineers in the SEI's Software Solutions Division, sit down with senior reesearcher Jose Morales to discuss a recent case study involving the deployment of a hypervisor onto edge devices in a resource-const...
May 28, 2025•1 hr 1 min
A 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 Cybersecurity Competition, a national cyber competition that identifies and rewards the best cybersecurity talent in the federal workforce. In six years, mor...
May 12, 2025•22 min
Evaluating 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 Coding Standard to better harmonize with the current state of the art for static analysis tools as well as simplify the process of source code securit...
Apr 17, 2025•26 min
In 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 the Department of Defense.
Apr 15, 2025•27 min
Insider 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 insider incidents. IIDES facilitates insider incident information handling to help organizations better protect themselves against the compromise of sensit...
Mar 26, 2025•39 min
Grace 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 this SEI podcast, Lewis sits down with Ipek Ozkaya, technical director of Engineering Intelligent Software Systems, to discuss her vision and plans ...
Mar 11, 2025•18 min
Machine 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 ML test and evaluation. MLTE can aid organizations across the DoD in more effectively negotiating, documenting, and evaluating model and system quali...
Mar 03, 2025•29 min
As 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 software modernization, including controlling the attack surface, incorporating industry practices such as DevSecOps, and the interplay between software,...
Feb 25, 2025•27 min
Containerization 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), Sasank Venkata Vishnubhatla and Maxwell Trdina, both engineers in the SEI CERT Division, sit down with Tim Chick, technical manager of the Applied Systems...
Dec 16, 2024•39 min
Software 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’s Software Engineering Measurement and Analysis team sits down with Bill Nichols, principal engineer and SEI data science team lead, to discuss softw...
Dec 04, 2024•23 min
One 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 cybersecurity measurement, what kinds of measurements are used in cybersecurity, and what those metrics can tell us about cyber systems.
Oct 11, 2024•27 min
To 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, and operating secure systems.
Oct 02, 2024•36 min
Harmful 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, discuss their recent work using role-playing game scenarios to identify biases in LLMs.
Sep 16, 2024•45 min
In 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) recognized a need to create an entity that would identify, research, and identify mitigation strategies for AI vulnerabilities to protect national as...
Sep 09, 2024•38 min
The 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 solutions engineer in the SEI CERT Division, discusses three API risks and how to address them through the lens of zero trust.
Aug 22, 2024•19 min
How 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.
Jul 25, 2024•43 min
Capability-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 understandably vary across these domains. In this SEI podcast, Anandi Hira, a data scientist, and William R. Nichols, an initiative lead for Software Engineer...
Jul 18, 2024•34 min
What 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.
Jul 01, 2024•26 min
Cybersecurity 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 Response Teams (CSIRTs) across the globe.
Jun 21, 2024•31 min
Developers know that static analysis helps make code more secure. However, static analysis tools often produce a large number of false positives, hindering their usefulness. In this podcast from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI), David Svoboda, a software security engineer in the SEI’s CERT Division, discusses Redemption, a new open source tool from the SEI that automatically repairs common errors in C/C++ code generated from static analysis alerts, making code ...
May 31, 2024•27 min
With the increasing complexity of software systems, the use of third-party components has become a widespread practice. Cyber disruptions, such as SolarWinds and Log4j, demonstrate the harm that can occur when organizations fail to manage third-party components in their software systems. In this podcast from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute, Carol Woody, principal researcher, and Michael Bandor, a senior software engineer, discuss a Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs)...
Apr 04, 2024•38 min
At the request of the White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) began exploring use cases for large language models (LLMs) within the Intelligence Community (IC). As part of this effort, ODNI sponsored the Mayflower Project at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute (SEI) from May 2023 through September 2023. The Mayflower Project attempted to answer the following questions: How might the IC set up a baseline, stand-alone LLM? How might the IC cu...
Feb 16, 2024•35 min
Modern software engineering practices of Agile and DevSecOps have provided a foundation for producing working software products faster and more reliably than ever before. Far too often, however, these practices do not address the non-software concerns of business mission and capability delivery even though these concerns are critical to the successful delivery of a software product. Through our work with government organizations, we have found that expanding DevSecOps beyond product development ...
Feb 09, 2024•34 min
Increasingly in government acquisition of software-intensive systems, we are seeing programs using Agile development methodology and earned value management. While there are many benefits to using both Agile and EVM, there are important considerations that software program managers must first address. In this podcast, Patrick Place, a senior engineer, and Stephen Wilson, a test engineer, both with the SEI Agile Transformation Team, discuss seven considerations for successful use of Agile and EVM...
Jan 31, 2024•35 min
As developers continue to build greater autonomy into cyber-physical systems (CPSs), such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and automobiles, these systems aggregate data from an increasing number of sensors. However, more sensors not only create more data and more precise data, but they require a complex architecture to correctly transfer and process multiple data streams. This increase in complexity comes with additional challenges for functional verification and validation, a greater potentia...
Jan 24, 2024•34 min
To better understand the potential uses of large language models (LLMs) and their impact, a team of researchers at the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute CERT Division conducted four in-depth case studies. The case studies span multiple domains and call for vastly different capabilities. In this podcast, Matthew Walsh, a senior data scientist in CERT, and Dominic Ross, Multi-Media Design Team lead, discuss their work in developing the four case studies as well as limitatio...
Dec 14, 2023•46 min
Research and development of quantum computers continues to grow at a rapid pace. The U.S. government alone spent more than $800 million on quantum information science research in 2022. Thomas Scanlon, who leads the data science group in the SEI CERT Division, was recently invited to be a participant in the Workshop on Cybersecurity of Quantum Computing , co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, to examine the emerging fiel...
Nov 28, 2023•23 min
