Blog

SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK, BLOG, FIN, RST

A “Free” Beer Swilling Puppy – The Quandary of Open Source Software Security

This title comes from a few people I know, which brought up a great point about the support model for popular and, dare I say it, open-source projects of critical or national interest. This article, in fact, was something ruminating in my head, and came off in parts via a few responses via Twitter that…
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SolarWind

Fighting the (f)IR(e) : Bucket Brigade, Not More Matches

Hey, you in enterprise IT… having a pretty crappy week this week, huh?!  I get it, I’ve been there – multiple times – before. If it’s not because of this one thing, it’s because of this other thing. Why don’t we just turn on our heels, throw our hands up and walk out, never to…
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A Confederacy of Dunces

A Confederacy of Dunces — The Role of Education and Experiences in Cybersecurity

If there’s anything that will set the tone of this article is that I cringe and pause every time I have to write “cybersecurity” in a non-ironic way in anything. When I got started in my career, that term didn’t exist in the professional vernacular, and to be honest, I couldn’t exactly pinpoint when I…
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OECD

Life (and Tech) After Government

During my career, I’ve worked for or in the Federal government several times, nearly in every way you could – a contractor, as an FFRDC staff, and two tours as a Federal employee – and in as many agencies and branches of the government as well. This would total more than a decade if you…
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Iowa Democratic Primary

“Test-Driven Democracy” — A DevOps Analysis of the Iowa Democratic Caucus

Unless you’ve been living under a rock news-wise in the United States, this has been a very hefty week in American politics, topped off with an Impeachment vote that may, or may not, determine the future of the country in the modern era. However, what I’m going to talk about is possibly a little less…
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COVID-19 Virus

Love In the Time Of COVID-19 : Social Separation, Adaptive Technology And You

Much is to be said about the benefits and downfalls of technology in the age of a global pandemic and how individuals adapt to either the availability of it or not. It’s easy to say to those who have the luxury of having Internet access and the time to read this article have it “easy”…
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Soup

If I Can DevOps, So Can You – Part VII : “You can put nearly anything in a pot and call it soup…”

When trying to wrap my own head around what I was going to need to actually implement a basic automated deployment pipeline with the kind of tools I felt that would be representative of a basic setup, I found myself awash in tons of blogs, articles, product pitches and “expert” advice. It felt daunting.  However,…
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Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

If I Can DevOps, So Can You – Part VI : “First service, the appetizer…”

By this point, your team is ready to deliver a wireframe, a mockup, a proof of concept (PoC) to see if what you want to do is even possible, in a feature incomplete way, can be done. In short, this is your “DevOps appetizer”. This can be formal, to seriously test the processes you have…
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Choppin Broccoli

If I Can DevOps, So Can You – Part V : “Choppin’ broccoli…”

Now you’re cooking. Prep the ingredients, have your water boiling, measured out the spices. Now you’ve got to assemble it all into one, two, three or more dishes to serve a complete meal, and time the delivery to the customer in the right order.  As an technology executive, you are leading your teams in laying…
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Not Food

If I Can DevOps, So Can You – Part IV : “But what if I don’t like what I’m cooking…”

Often the mark of a good chef is at least eating, or tasting the food before they send it out to be eaten. It takes but a few episodes of (or catching some of the memes) of Gordon Ramsay reaming out a chef for serving something inedible to realize that you know what you are…
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