CyberWire Daily at 10: From an idea to the airwaves.

Maria Varmazis: Hello. Maria Varmazis here. Thanks for joining me today. The "CyberWire Daily" is celebrating its 10 year anniversary this year, and in honor of that big milestone we're releasing monthly special edition episodes throughout 2026. Today's N2K CyberWire special edition kicks off our 10 year anniversary series with a big picture look at the "CyberWire Daily" itself. And for more on the show and how it all began I sat down with Dave Bittner, host of the "CyberWire Daily" and Peter Kilpe, CEO of N2K Networks. [ Music ]

Peter Kilpe: I would say that basically my path, you know, working, doing the creative work, user experience design work in the intelligence community as a contractor set me on that path. That was my first exposure to cybersecurity more broadly, and that was the -- actually in a more in depth kind of way. And I ended up working for a stream of companies doing these kinds of things. For one of the companies, a security company in Baltimore, we ended up building -- creating a newsletter for ourselves all about the cybersecurity, helping educate our own employees on what's going on inside the security world. A number of people kept telling us how great our little internal new -- intelligence newsletter was and we should share it with the world. So we did. And we ultimately built a newsletter, a cybersecurity newsletter product, that was read in almost every country. Probably two readers in Madagascar, but really we --

Dave Bittner: That island with the penguins?

Maria Varmazis: Yeah. They were evading the pandemic every board game. Place me in an end time. When about was this, what year roughly?

Peter Kilpe: This would have been 2012/2013. And it was probably just before Dave joined us. You know, our newsletter became very popular. We still again -- not an internal product, but it wasn't a profit making venture. Dave came to join us, you know, a little 2015, bringing his immense talents to our creative team, especially in the video world. He got to know the products, particularly the newsletter that we were doing. He had met our first editor John Petrick. And came by my office and said, "Hey, Peter. You know, this newsletter you have might make a great podcast." And David had a lot of experience working on podcasts in the past doing broadcast kind of work. And I said, "That's interesting. Why don't you like show me what that would look like?" So he worked with the editor, came back, showed a little prototype of what the first podcast could look like which, by the way, was just like five minutes long. You know the first iteration.

Maria Varmazis: Dave, how did you have that idea? I mean obviously you had the expertise there, but what -- was there a lightening strike moment for you or was it a slow realization or what? How did that -- how did you get to that point?

Dave Bittner: Well, I in my previous career I had produced podcasts for a number of other people. So I was familiar with the medium. But I'd been more behind the scenes. And so when I joined the team at the cybersecurity company they had this -- Peter said they had this preexisting newsletter called the "CyberWire." And I thought, "Why don't I just read it every day?" I had also, as Peter mentioned -- I had a background in theater. I'd been doing voice over professionally since I was like eight. So it was something I was very comfortable with. And the idea was just that every day I would just read the newsletter as it existed, just read it verbatim, and we'd put that out in audio form. We originally I think we held ourselves to something like a 10 minute limit for show length. Ha ha ha [laughs].

Peter Kilpe: I remember. And then we were like, "Should we extend this to six?" You know, and --

Dave Bittner: Yeah. And then it became like --

Maria Varmazis: Seems so quaint now.

Dave Bittner: Yeah. And, you know, Peter's management style is very much, you know, pushing you to stretch your boundaries and find what other things you can do and constant improvement. So we, you know -- at first it was like, well, what if we did an interview every now and then? Like oh. We could do that. What if we did an interview every day? So it just kind of snowballed and eventually took the form that it is today. It really was just as simple as thinking that we were going to read the daily news briefing every day and just send it out in to the world. And didn't take us too long to figure out we were on to something.

Maria Varmazis: I was going to say there must have been some very good audience signals that you not only had anticipated at the start, but that you were getting as you started going because not every podcast has legs. I mean certainly 10 years is incredible. But earlier on you all must have been seeing things like, "Oh this is getting traction." What were you hearing at that time?

Peter Kilpe: It was actually really surprising to me. I wasn't sure what to expect, you know. We thought this might be kind of a side project, you know. It was very good and, you know, we definitely believed in what we were making, but within six months we had fortune 10 companies like reaching out and saying, "How do I get on this show?" You know. You know. And the audience became really enamored with what we were doing. We'd mentioned it in our newsletter, of course. Also some of our customers who are still our customers 10 years later reached out to us and said, "We're in. Yeah. We're happy to sponsor what you guys are doing." And weren't even particularly interested in the ROI. They just wanted to be connected with the trust that we were building in the community. Not long after that we realized that this had real legs and could be a business. So five of us split off to go make it a company and that was Dave Bittner, Jen Eiben, John Petrick, Chris Russell, and myself. And we went off. We all had our function. You know, I needed to help, you know, turn what we were doing in to a business so that it could survive. John Petrick would write the stories of the day. You know, Dave Bittner would tell the stories. You know, help people engage with our audience, talk to people. Jen Eiben would help create the infrastructure and process we needed to be able to, you know, talk to the world. And, you know, shape the stories that we were doing. And Chris helped build the technical infrastructure that helped us deliver what we did day in day out. We were a small and mighty team, and we still are.

Maria Varmazis: A little bigger though.

Dave Bittner: Those early days were -- as anyone who's been in that sort of a startup knows, everybody's just kind of taking care of everybody. Or everything and everybody. And just doing what needs to be done just to see you to the next week. And we were definitely in that mode. I think just getting back to the startup, you know, one of the things I think that set us apart at the outset, and you have to remember 10 years ago podcasting was different than it is today, we just sounded like a real radio program. We were able to sound like a news show. And part of that was just the technical experience we had, the experience we had writing. Just we had this group of people who could together make that happen. And I think at the outset it set us apart. These days it's not hard to sound great with all of the tools and the filters and all the things that the audio teams can do, but back then it wasn't a given that you were going to sound good. And we did. And I think that caught people's ear and helped get us off to a good start.

Maria Varmazis: Yeah. I'm also very curious in addition to that high standard of production excellence which is -- speaks for itself truly, also the guiding star, like the north star for the show in terms of standards, editorial responsibility, that sort of thing. Can you talk a little bit about that because that's one of the things that the show's also really well known for, like that level of integrity.

Peter Kilpe: Well, I mean the, you know, vision of the CyberWire when it first, you know, came out -- and we didn't really like fully articulate this, you know, in to words as we were going forward, but really what we were doing is making the world a safer place, you know, by keeping people educated and informed about what was going on in security. And we did it diligently. We did it without fluff. We did it without creating FUD, you know, in the community. We just told it like it was and we were there every day. We were reliable. Even in major snowstorms, you know. I don't -- I'm not even sure there is one day that is off air, one business day that is off air for the CyberWire. I mean through the pandemic and other things we were there. Other places shut down. Of course we have our breaks that we build in to what we do because people work hard day in and day out on this show. But we were there and we started building trust with leaders in the public sector, the private sector, intelligence community, law enforcement not just in the U.S, but abroad. Started using the content that we create. Again not just as fluff, but people use what we made to help bring context to their own intelligence operations, their own disaster recovery kinds of things. And even major companies, you know, basically -- I don't want to name names at the moment, but a number of public companies actually assigned listening to the CyberWire to their employees. They wanted them to be informed when they went in to meetings. They wanted to make sure that they were growing and that they were always in the know when it comes to cybersecurity.

Dave Bittner: I remember a couple of moments that struck me as being noteworthy maybe milestones. First was not long after we started publishing. Of course we were tracking our numbers every day which was very exciting because they were going up and up slowly, but surely. And I remember I was at a women in cybersecurity conference I believe in Texas and I was doing the publishing and the things that needed to be done in my hotel room. And I think it was the first time that we had crossed 3,000 downloads for a day. And it was a big boost. Like the day before had been probably half that. And so somebody caught notice or we got, you know, published. Somebody mentioned us somewhere and we got a big boost. And I remember how exciting that was. And I think I said to Peter, "Hey, we crossed 3,000." And Peter said, "That's great. I think we'll really have something when we cross 10,000." And I thought to myself -- I thought to myself, "Uh. Come on. That's impossible." And of course it wasn't impossible. You know, probably 6 months later we crossed the 10,000 a day threshold. And it's just grown ever since. Another moment that was special for me was one day in the mail I got a little padded envelope with no return address and it was full of challenge coins from NSA and Fort Meade and just a handwritten unsigned note that said, "Thanks for all you do."

Maria Varmazis: Dang.

Dave Bittner: That was it.

Maria Varmazis: Wow.

Peter Kilpe: Pretty special moment. Dave also gets all the goodies, you know, from --

Dave Bittner: It's true. Yes. I get all the swag.

Peter Kilpe: Cookies and other delights.

Maria Varmazis: You're not jealous at all, Peter.

Dave Bittner: But to this day, you know, I'll go to events and, as I've said, you know, I'm just the most public facing person in this team that makes this happen. So people come up to me and thank me on behalf of the team. And it just never gets old. People in very important positions both in government and the private sector whose job is to help keep all of us safe are sincerely thankful that we help them do their job. And that feels great.

Peter Kilpe: It does. It reminds me too that like, you know, we oftentimes are talking about the impact that we have with, you know, the intelligence community or some, you know, big leader who listens to us. But our team is really excited to hear from individuals who reach out to us fairly regularly and they say, "Oh, you helped me get a job." You know, "I learned about you and you helped me transition in to this -- in to this career." Or, "Security was part of my -- assigned to me as part of my portfolio. You helped me get there." Or "Get where I needed to go." I remember sitting at an airport once and the lady saw my CyberWire shirt and she's like, "Oh my gosh. You know, I listened to you on my way to a job interview the other day and I got the job. And I just wanted to say thank you." That means a lot to us, you know. We touch a lot of lives. We're in people's ears. You know, we have their -- we have their trust. And the idea that we can actually help people move forward in their careers, help them grow in their knowledge, help their organizations stay safe, it just it means a lot to us.

Dave Bittner: I think also the foundational principles that we established, and that was really the partnership with Peter and our founding editor John Petrick who's since retired, we don't report on rumors or gossip or any of that stuff. You know, we just don't go there. And because we understand people's time is valuable and so we try to help people make the most of their time. And so I think that's been an important north star part of our value proposition and I know it's part of -- we have a daily production meeting. Every day we get together. The whole team runs down the stories that we're covering. And sometimes we have lively debates over what to include and what not, who to name and who not to name, whether something is really in our lane or not, or where in the run down something should be if it's controversial or not. And so to have those discussions and come up with a group or -- to come up with an answer that the team is happy with and everybody feels like they can sleep at night. You know, that's really important to me and Peter and all of us. So it's nice to be able to hang your hat on that and know that you can feel good about that part of things.

Maria Varmazis: Yeah. Absolutely. I want to ask you both two very macro level questions as we reflect on the last 10 years. I'm going to tell you what they both are so you can noodle on them while the other one is speaking. Just give you a minute. I want to get your thoughts on the large trend lines in cybersecurity in the last 10 years which is we could take hours talking about that one and I know we will, but I'm just curious if anything bubbles up quickly on that one. I'm just curious. And the second thing I want to ask you is a question I know you both get a lot which is advice for people on making a longstanding podcast. Again 10 years is a huge milestone. And I know you both get asked a lot about how did you do it. What should I do? How do I be successful like you? So that would be my -- the wrap up question is the advice on that front. So let's go back first to the cybersecurity question because I'm I just -- I can't not ask. And I know we'll be diving in to it in further detail later on other shows or with other people, but I just have to ask. 10 years of covering cybersecurity. Thoughts. Trends. What have you noticed? What is your gut feeling on how things have changed, how things have evolved in interesting ways? Who wants to address that one first? Dave? Peter?

Peter Kilpe: It's a really huge question.

Maria Varmazis: It truly is.

Peter Kilpe: It's hard to address. I would say when we first started doing what we were doing cybersecurity was still kind of niche, at least in the commercial space. Definitely a lot of larger companies, you know, emerging to tackle the challenge, but you know it wasn't seen as this sort of important function that cuts across every vertical in every industry. And I think what we were able to see is again, you know, cyber attacks have been going on for quite a long time, but as we started this podcast and the newsletter and things that we've been doing, you know, we've seen the nature of threats evolve, you know, over time. You see the kind of capability that's given to small actors, you know, that previously was just in the domain of, you know, nation states. You know, how nation states started to use criminal networks to help them, you know, advance their own missions. Really when we first started there's some of the early news around like OT kinds of attacks and threats to critical infrastructure were just starting to get in to the consciousness. Definitely security people have been thinking about this for a long time, but it really started to come about through the time that we were creating the CyberWire. The nature of ransomware itself, you know, has made a particularly important, you know, evolution as it started as this thing that a few people did and it became fully operationalized, industrialized, you know, to the point where you can buy it as a service, you know, like you were buying something from Salesforce or something. I mean it really, you know, full on kits to do what it is that you need to do. And the kind of disruption that actors large and small can do has really evolved in the last decade. And it's changing things geopolitically. It's changing things, you know, inside various countries. I don't think we've begun to see what's possible.

Dave Bittner: I mean I agree with all that. I think, you know, as you said, the rise of ransomware along with cryptocurrency which I think has been an accelerant for ransomware --

Maria Varmazis: Great way of putting it. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Bittner: Right? And then obviously these past couple years AI, but I think also the global fraud market that's just exploded with phishing and social engineering and how many bad things start with that. And most of them come from the other side of the world, and it's hard to toss a wall up around the internet. So just huge growth of that has become normalized. I think that's remarkable.

Maria Varmazis: Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So I'm going to transition to the other question now. Advice for people who are trying to start their own podcast or people who are trying to continue a podcast and are looking at the CyberWire's longevity and wondering, "What are some take aways that I should know?" So Dave I know you get this question a lot. So and you give really great advice on this one, but I am curious to get both of your takes on this, but Dave let's start with you on that.

Dave Bittner: Well, lately I've been using a phrase that I borrowed from, you know, the great comedian and actor Steve Martin in his memoir. People. He said people ask him, "How did you get noticed at first?" And he says, "Be so good they can't ignore you." And I think, you know, there's a certain arrogance in that statement, but I think there's a certain arrogance in thinking that what you're doing is something that vast numbers of people want to consume. So yeah. It takes a certain amount of confidence and ego or whatever you want to call it to put yourself out there in that way. So I think that's a big part of it. You have to set high quality standards for yourself and the people around you in what you do. And then consistency. We haven't missed a day in 10 years. And I probably just jinxed it, but being there and being reliable that's been a huge part of our success as well. Doing a daily is not easy. We make it look easy. It's not. Trust me. Especially in those early days when it was just a small little team and we were spinning plates and juggling balls, you know. All that. So there's that. And then for folks who are just starting out or have their sights set on something like this a big piece of advice I give to folks is try to plot out your first 20 shows because everybody has half a dozen shows in them. About something, a topic that they're passionate about. But usually between episode 6 and episode 10 you start running out of the easy ideas and so if you really think you have something that can last write out 20 episodes, an outline for 20 episodes. If you can do that and it's easy then you're probably on to something.

Maria Varmazis: That's great advice. Peter, what about you?

Peter Kilpe: I would agree with everything that Dave just said, but I would add that there's something to be said for authenticity. You know, just, you know, being yourselves. You know, speaking from your heart. You know, sharing with people in an earnest way. You know, while there is some arrogance in thinking that we can, you know, actually make a -- build a company, reach, you know, literally millions, I think we're like on our getting close to our 100 million downloads, you know, threshold for what we're doing, but really just, you know, being ourselves, trying to be truthful, learning along the way. You know, we've made mistakes and we're -- I think we're good at correcting those when they happen. Being ourselves, you know, talking with people, being open and friendly. I think one of the greatest compliments that we ever got was somebody had been a listener of our show and she ended up somehow becoming a guest on the show. And before her interview aired she made a little social media post and she said, "You know, it was really great. I have -- it was exciting to have an interview with the CyberWire the other day. And it was so nice to see that they're as nice on the inside as they are on the outside." And it just it meant a lot to all of us. You know, we try to be friendly. When you come interview with us, you know, we're not trying to, you know, do got you questions or back you in to corner. You know, we want to hear what you have to say, and we're going to give you the space, you know, and ability to do that, and support to be able to do that. So I think that's part of it. And like Dave said consistency. I'd also just call it perseverance. You know, you have to keep going. I mean you can keep going and not listen to what your audience is telling you or you can keep going, but also be listening. Like how can I improve? What can I change? How can I iterate? How do I set some goals for my podcast so that I can keep going? I mean today, you know, CyberWire is not just a -- is not just like the daily show. You know, we have a number of different shows of our own. We have a larger network where, you know, larger companies like Palo Alto Networks, Rubrik, and others are part of what we're doing. And it's just it takes perseverance.

Maria Varmazis: So Peter we've talked a bit about the start of the show, the genesis of the "CyberWire Daily" but it is not just a podcast anymore, although it is incredibly a podcast also. So there is a -- there's a whole company around it. Tell me how things went from five people, the "CyberWire Daily," to N2K and the company that it is now.

Peter Kilpe: That's a great question, and it's, you know, a lot of blood, sweat, tears. You know, it was -- it's really hard to make a company. It's actually very hard to make a media company. I was very fortunate to have that, you know, be part of a founding group that was as dedicated as they were. But we were very fortunate in the early days to have companies coming to us and saying, "We love what you do and we want to support it no matter what." We hadn't figured out like what does ROI mean for our customers. And, you know, we -- it just that started to snowball and take us down a great path. We were able in a very short period of time to become a profitable company. Around the 2018 mark, you know, we thought to ourselves, "Well, it would be great to be able to take this to the next level, to be able to grow both in content and quality." You know, spread our wings, so to speak. So we raised a seed round of capital through DataTribe. And that took us on a new path, you know. Having a board of directors and, you know, being answerable to others. And they've been amazing partners, by the way. Really helping us grow and mature as an organization. And we continued to grow throughout the years and we decided we were ready to grow yet again around the 2022 mark. And in searching for that next investor we came across the good people at Graham Holdings. Graham Holdings, you may well know them. They used to own the "Washington Post," sold that to Jeff Bezos. They own Slate and "Foreign Policy." They were also -- created a podcast hosting platform we use today called Megaphone. We reached out to them to talk about, you know, what we were doing. They expressed interest in being a part of an A round with us. But they also saw something in our company. I'm really glad actually we're touching base on this. They saw that we're not just providing information or situational awareness or news. We're actually helping people get up the knowledge curve and helping people advance in their careers, helping even organizations advance in their careers. And as they thought about what we were doing they had thought very carefully about that, that educational piece, and Graham Holdings also owns one of the educational pioneers in the industry called Kaplan. Again one of the pioneers in online education. And they said, "Hey, you know, we have a cybersecurity training organization called CyberVista. You know, how would you like to accelerate this idea of helping people get up the knowledge curve? And they proposed a union between CyberWire Inc and CyberVista. We became N2K. N2K stands for News 2 Knowledge. It's that continuum of learning from being in the know, in the now, what do I need to know to do my job today, to the things you need to learn to be able to get that next job or to make your organization more resilient or to, you know, help your organization through some transformation or other. So we did that and first year operating together was 2023. And today in addition to being the largest B2B cybersecurity podcast network N2K is the world's leading provider of practice test content for cybersecurity certifications. Many of the world's largest training platforms buy that, buy their learning content from us. And this not only just gives us another, you know, another thing that we do, but the idea that we help people learn, you know, the things that they're making, the data set that we're producing about all of the different vendors and security organizations, everything else, that informs everything that we do on a daily basis. Organizations have even reached out to us to license this content for AI purposes and, you know, it's vital to what it is that we do as a business, not just as an extra. So it's exciting to be -- have gone from CyberWire to N2K and to be able to help the industry in all these different ways.

Dave Bittner: I'll just add what a joy it's been to meet all of these folks. We sort of, you know, blended this family, these two families, kind of, you know, "Brady Bunch" style. All of a sudden we had access to the subject matter experts. The people who are writing these test questions, they know their stuff. And so it's just one more source of information and knowledge and expertise that we can lean on and rely on. So it's really helped us up our own game and taken us to an even higher standard by having that level of expertise in house. So it's been a really good experience I think for those of us on the editorial side as well.

Peter Kilpe: Yeah. It's an incredible group of people that we've come together with. And, you know, being the larger family now it's just exciting to be able to learn from others and benefit from the experience and the expertise of a broader team. And there's a really great overlap culturally, you know, in how we do things, the dedication to quality, helping people get above there, get up to the next level. I was at a conference and I was on a little some tour bus, you know, heading to the airport. And somebody's sitting next to me. It was an IT professional in Europe. And he goes, "Oh, you know, that's interesting, you know. I took such and such, you know, test from -- " I don't want to name names. Such and such company. And I was like, "You took our test." You know, those practice tests that we made. So just randomly running in to some guy, you know, who we were part of his career story. Really gratifying.

Maria Varmazis: That seems to be a common thread in many different ways for not just the "CyberWire Daily," but also largely at N2K. Hearing those gratifying stories. Yeah.

Peter Kilpe: Think about what we do. Like, you know, literally the, you know, hundreds of thousands per month, millions per year of listeners that we have. Literally hundreds of thousands of people per year are utilizing test content that we work on day in and day out. So we're touching experts all over the world.

Maria Varmazis: Given that you've been working on this show for again 10 years, but really longer than that, I'm sure there's a lot of people that you want to say a thank you to or things that you're especially appreciative of. And I want to make sure we give that some space. So putting you on that.

Dave Bittner: Well, I say all the time that I feel like I'm the luckiest person to have the job that I have, that I came -- I stumbled in to this thing that just happens to use so many of the skills that I'd acquired along the way over the course of, you know, a life with fits and starts and successes and blind alleys. So to have all that come together in a way that is both successful, but also gratifying and intellectually stimulating day after day, the people I get to meet and work with and all that sort of thing, I'm just really, really grateful and happy. You know, I don't have to do this. I get to do this. And I'm just really thankful for everybody who's made that possible, both our team, but also all the sponsors and guests who believed in us along the way. I'm just I never take for granted the luck that we've had, you know, but with a good sprinkling of hard work as well.

Peter Kilpe: I just want to reiterate some things that Dave said. You know, what we do today at N2K, you know, is not the -- it's not the vision or work of a single genius, you know, that's like behind the scenes making it work. It's really team work that makes it work. You know, to work at a place where we can bring together the imagination, creativity, a spirit of fun, and actually make something that people like and enjoy and actually the products that we have like companies have been supporting us for a long time not just out of charity, but we help because of our voice that we've developed in the marketplace. We've been able to help companies grow and succeed and, you know, to become a vital part of the marketplace, you know, to become a nexus of information about technology, about people, about expertise, about the evolving threat landscape is enormously gratifying, and it's the work of many that makes it happen. Of course, you know, all of the listeners that are tuning in day in and day out, not just tuning in, but like sending us notes, engaging with us, we've developed over the last decade a very -- an incredible network of people who we work with, who we have access to, to be able to reach out to double check our work, make sure that we're doing -- going the right way. And to get the expertise that the community needs. And it's been really exciting to be a part of what we're doing. I too feel gratitude for being able to be a part of it. It's a privilege.

Maria Varmazis: Well, Peter and Dave, thank you for a wonderful 10 years of the CyberWire. I think as someone who has been a listener well before I worked with you I just want to also say my own personal gratitude because it also helped me immensely in my career. So thank you for everything that you all have been building. I'm going to be the voice of the listener in this case. Genuinely thank you. And congratulations genuinely on a wonderful 10 years. May things continue even longer than another 10. Onward and upward.

Dave Bittner: Here's to the next 10.

Maria Varmazis: Here's to the next 10. So Peter Kilpe, CEO of N2K, Dave Bittner, the host, the voice of the "CyberWire Daily." Gentlemen, it's been an absolute joy. Thank you for speaking with me today.

Peter Kilpe: A pleasure, Maria. Thank you.

Dave Bittner: Thank you.

Maria Varmazis: Thank you. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you back here next time. [ Music ]