Despite the long history of producing and consuming surface-ripened cheeses, we are just beginning to understand the diversity of microbes that negatively and positively affect the quality and safety of these cheeses. I will explain the genomic and experimental approaches that my research team is using to dissect microbiome diversity and dynamics in the rinds of surface-ripened cheeses. Metagenomic and genomic approaches demonstrate species and strain-level variation that contributes to the diversity of cheese aesthetics and flavors and highlight the widespread abundance of non-starter culture bacteria and fungi in surface-ripened cheeses. Experimental approaches demonstrate the dynamic interactions occurring within cheese rind microbial communities and highlight how these interactions can be managed to create specific cheese communities. I will also describe our efforts to diagnose the microbial origins of common cheese rind defects and how we are collaborating with chemists to identify the sensory impacts of specific cheese microbes. Ongoing work is uncovering the potential risks of antibiotic resistance genes and opportunistic pathogens that can occur in the rinds of some cheese varieties. Collectively, our work is uncovering a previously unknown diversity of microbes in cheese rinds and providing key data on how to manage and manipulate these microbes to improve the quality and safety of traditional cheeses.