Brian Krebs is one of the premier beatbloggers and a big reason for that is the strong user community that has formed around his blog.

Krebs believes that interaction is at the core of good blogging. After all, is it even really a blog without user interaction?

My favorite quote from our Q&A sessions is:

Readers are more inclined to speak their minds, interact with others, and generally contribute to a more well-rounded discussion and story if they get a sense that the author is accountable and responsive.

You can find why we like him and his blog so much here. Without further ado, here is our Q&A:

Q: How did you get into blogging? Why did you start Security Fix? What was the original vision?

A: It really was meant, I think, as an outlet for some of the stuff I was telling my editors about in our weekly planning meetings. I was always mentioning things in passing that maybe didn’t seem to amount to a full story, but then we’d invariably see some other news outlet get attention a few weeks later printing essentially the same thing. So, early on the thinking was, well, here’s a place where we can put all the stuff that isn’t quite fully baked into a story, or maybe is interesting or timely but doesn’t justify spending a whole lot of time on. We also envisioned it as a way to let readers know about the latest security threats and ways they could protect themselves.

Q: How has the blog morphed and changed over the years?

A: From pretty early on, I began using the blog to break news, both investigative and day-to-day stories. It also has been tremendously helpful as a supplemental publishing vehicle for stories that run on our Web site or in the paper. This allows us to dig a little deeper into the technical side of the story without scaring away readers.

Security Fix also has grown quite a bit due to the community of readers that has built up around it. Quite often, some of the most interesting items in the blog can be seen in the comments sections of each posts. We are working on some redesign ideas for the blog (which hasn’t had a facelift since it first launched four years ago), and some of the ideas we’re planning to implement will be geared toward encouraging more readers to leave more thoughtful and engaging comments and voice their opinions.

Q: Do you do work for the print edition?

A: I work for Washingtonpost.com and have for nearly six years now. Traditionally, I have been an online reporter who’s been lucky enough to see his stories in the print edition about two to three times per month on average. But the distinction between the .com and the paper is one that will be ending soon. We are currently in the process of merging the two newsrooms into one physical space.

Q: How does your blog help you report?

A: Put simply, it is where I do most of my work, so to say that it “helps” my work is probably a bit of an understatement. For a variety of reasons, producing a story in the traditional sense on the site sometimes takes longer than publishing the same content out over the blog; so in some sense that helps me publish scoops faster — although, an editor looks at and approves everything I write before it goes up on the blog.

Our readers really do help me report stories out more thoroughly. The nice thing about a blog is you can and should update it frequently, and so if I leave out an important perspective or relevant fact or link, I can add that after the fact along with a note letting readers know we’ve done so. But more importantly, news tips from readers are wonderful and very helpful. Unfortunately, they sometimes come in the form of comments, which means all of my competitors get to see them the same time I do.

Q: You have built up a knowledgeable community around your beat. Users regularly make great points in the comments after your post and share links. How were you able to build up such a strong community?

A: Computer and Internet security are fields that attract people who are detail-oriented and by and large well-informed. Thankfully, these same folks are also usually quite opinionated. I, however, try not to inject my opinion in the blog pieces I write, and prefer to tell a compelling story by thorough reporting and attention to detail.

Probably the other big subset of readers are regular readers who don’t want to have to become rocket surgeons in order to understand how to stay safe online each day. I spend as much time writing for those readers as well, because they’re a huge subset of the blog’s audience, and because people expect that they will find updates at Security Fix about the important, timely and uncomplicated security-related developments as they impact the average computer user.

Q: You also frequently interact with users on your blog. Why do you do this? How does it help your blogging and reporting?

A: Because interaction is the essence of what blogging should be about, in my opinion. Readers are more inclined to speak their minds, interact with others, and generally contribute to a more well-rounded discussion and story if they get a sense that the author is accountable and responsive.

Q: What kinds of Web and social media tools do you use to help you do your work?

A: Not many. I may one day be dragged kicking and screaming into the world of Twitter and Facebook, though. I use both of those networks for finding people, of course, but I’m still a little wary of interacting with people and sources via these networks when I’m working on investigative stories. Twice in the past month, I’ve had to scold sources after the fact, for Twittering their friends for the answer to a question I’d asked them to which they didn’t have an answer — effectively telling the whole world the focus of my then-unreported story.