The Map and the Floor
After years of working, teaching, writing in this field, the pattern I see most in newcomers is not lack of ability. It is freezing...
In a World with Threats Around Every Corner...
security made simple
Featured
Practice at Home the Way You Preach at Work
I spend my working hours telling teams how to do security well. Segment the network. Write the change down. Model the threat before you build the control. Then I go home, and if I am honest with myself, the temptation is to cut every one of those corners because it is "just the lab."
From Log to Incident, and the Budget That Decides What You See
I have taught this material before as two sessions, and I usually open each session the same way: this is not a tool class. Tools get named below, plenty of them, but every one is an implementation of the same pipeline, and the pipeline is what transfers to whatever product your employer bought...
Names, Addresses, and Time From the Wire Up
I work two support queues. In one, readers email when a lab created output or did not match the screenshots within the book, the other, my extended family calls because the smart doorbell logs visitors an hour before they arrive, or the Wi-Fi is "broken" while every light on the router looks fine...
The Moment AI Stops Being a Tool: Why Autonomy Is the Risk Multiplier
A tool's failure is advisory because a human still reviews the output before anything happens. An agent's failure is operational because the bad output is the action...
Latest
The Map and the Floor
After years of working, teaching, writing in this field, the pattern I see most in newcomers is not lack of ability. It is freezing...
Practice at Home the Way You Preach at Work
I spend my working hours telling teams how to do security well. Segment the network. Write the change down. Model the threat before you build the control. Then I go home, and if I am honest with myself, the temptation is to cut every one of those corners because it is "just the lab."
From Log to Incident, and the Budget That Decides What You See
I have taught this material before as two sessions, and I usually open each session the same way: this is not a tool class. Tools get named below, plenty of them, but every one is an implementation of the same pipeline, and the pipeline is what transfers to whatever product your employer bought...
Names, Addresses, and Time From the Wire Up
I work two support queues. In one, readers email when a lab created output or did not match the screenshots within the book, the other, my extended family calls because the smart doorbell logs visitors an hour before they arrive, or the Wi-Fi is "broken" while every light on the router looks fine...
The Moment AI Stops Being a Tool: Why Autonomy Is the Risk Multiplier
A tool's failure is advisory because a human still reviews the output before anything happens. An agent's failure is operational because the bad output is the action...
Basics Series - #5 Firewall Configuration (OPNsense VM Configuration) Part 3
Welcome back to the Basics Series. In Basics Series - #3 we compared the firewall market, picked OPNsense for the lab, and installed it as a VM. In Basics Series - #4 we worked through the traditional vs. transparent-bridged decision and I promised a configuration walkthrough. This is that post...
The Outermost Ring: Enterprise and Cloud Security — and the End of the Series
This installment goes in a different direction. Where the last post zoomed all the way in — past the running host, past the alert, down to a single line of source...stepping away from individual controls entirely and asks about the distributed, multi-platform enterprise the cloud produced.
Four Tools, One Target: The Application Security Testing Labs in the Cybersecurity Architect's Handbook, Second Edition
We've climbed through the rings of the architecture... This installment goes further upstream than any of them. It steps back to the code itself — and asks how you find the flaw while it's still cheap to fix and it hasn't shipped yet. That's the domain at the heart of Application Security Testing.
Every Seat in the SOC: The Incident Response and Investigation Labs in the Cybersecurity Architect's Handbook, Second Edition
This installment does something different. Every domain we've covered so far — even the unglamorous hygiene loop — was, at bottom, an attempt to keep the bad day from arriving. This one starts the morning after it did...
Amazon
·
Book Review: The Ultimate Ubuntu Handbook — A 24.04 Field Guide That Will Outlive 24.04
My lab runs Debian 13 as the primary environment, so when a 356-page Ubuntu book landed on my desk, my first instinct was to skim it, nod politely... Instead I read the whole thing — and I'm giving it five stars...
The Unglamorous Loop That Decides Everything: Inside the Vulnerability and Configuration Management Labs
I've been working through the second edition of the Cybersecurity Architect's Handbook's "secret menu" one domain at a time...the controls that still mean something after everything else has fallen. This installment does something different...it looks down at the ground all of them are standing on.
The Innermost Ring: Hands-On Identity and Encryption Labs from the Cybersecurity Architect's Handbook, Second Edition
Every control we design as architects ultimately serves one of two questions. Who is allowed to do what — and is the data still protected ... Access control answers the first. Data protection answers the second. Together they form the innermost ring of a defense-in-depth architecture...