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Posts

Thoughts on cyber security, DevOps, programming & more.

WFH Lesson 5 - Communication and Leadership in a Remote World

The shift from managing yourself to managing relationships — how to communicate, build trust, lead a team, and stay human when nobody can see you.

remote-work

Dangling DNS and Abandoned Cloud Services: The Subdomain Takeover Problem

How abandoned cloud resources and stale DNS records let attackers serve content on your domain — and what to do about it.

dns

Building a Twilio SMS Integration Securely: What Most Tutorials Skip

Most Twilio tutorials get you to 'working' fast and security never. Here's how to build the SMS integration correctly from the start.

twilio

Blocking Builds Is Not Being Mean

Why security build gates exist, how to handle the cultural pushback, and how to be a genuine partner to development teams instead of a blocker.

devsecops

Build a Secure Backend API with Azure App Service

A step-by-step guide to deploying a genuinely secure API on Azure App Service — covering managed identity, Key Vault, network restrictions, Entra ID auth, TLS, and Application Insights.

azure

Building a Secure API 90 Percent of the Time

A practical guide to building APIs that are secure by default — covering input validation, auth patterns, rate limiting, logging, and error handling.

api-security

Dev Workflow as a Security Engineer: What My Day Actually Looks Like

A ground-level look at the daily dev workflow of a security engineer — tools, code review process, security automation, Git workflow, and incident response tooling.

devsecops

Explore API Security - How Do Attacks Happen

A practitioner's breakdown of the OWASP API Security Top 10 — what the attacks actually look like and what you can do about them.

api-security

HackingAPIs Book Review

An honest review of 'Hacking APIs' by Corey Ball — who should read it, what you'll learn, and how it reshapes your approach to API security.

book-review

How to Hack APIs - Approaches from DevSecOps

From a defender's perspective: how attackers approach API hacking, and why understanding offense makes you a dramatically better defender.

api-security

Hunting Exposed Secrets in GitHub Repos: My Neovim-Powered Workflow

My practical, reproducible workflow for finding exposed secrets in GitHub repos using trufflehog, gitleaks, and Neovim — with CSV output for reporting.

neovim

Security Roles and Teams Explained

A plain-English breakdown of security roles, how teams are structured, and what people actually do day-to-day.

careers

Security Tools Simplified

Cut through the vendor noise and learn what security tools actually do, when you need them, and when you don't.

SAST

Automate Everything: The Philosophy and Practice of Getting Out of Your Own Way

Why you should automate everything you do more than once, and how to actually start — shell scripts, CI/CD, cron jobs, reporting automation, with real examples.

automation

Building a Secure DevOps Pipeline

A hands-on walkthrough of building security into CI/CD pipelines with real YAML examples across GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, and GitLab CI.

ci-cd

Kubernetes Security: A Beginner's Field Guide

The essential Kubernetes security concepts every practitioner needs to know before they get paged at 2am.

kubernetes

Pipeline Your Way to Safety

How to use pipelines as security enforcement points — implementing policy-as-code, tuning gates, and making security a guardrail instead of a bottleneck.

ci-cd

Platform Engineering Is Security's Best Friend (If You Do It Right)

How security fits into the platform engineering movement — and why platform engineering done right makes secure defaults the path of least resistance.

platform-engineering

Top Three Books on DevSecOps

Honest reviews of the three books that most shaped my approach to DevSecOps: The DevOps Handbook, Alice and Bob Learn Application Security, and Securing DevOps.

books

A Mentor's Guide to Why HR Doesn't Know What They Want

The disconnect between what HR writes in job postings and what engineering teams actually need — and how to navigate it.

hiring

Code Reviews - The Road to Learning

Why code reviews are the most underrated learning tool in software engineering — and how to actually do them well.

code-review

Editors: Why I Use Both Neovim AND JetBrains (And Why That's Not a Contradiction)

The myth of the one true editor, when Neovim shines vs when JetBrains is the right call, dotfiles culture, and how to build a workflow that uses the best of both.

neovim

Get Better at the Keyboard: The Investment That Compounds Every Day

Your hands touch the keyboard thousands of times a day — investing in that skill compounds over a career. Touch typing, vim motions, mechanical keyboards, ergonomics, and the resources that actually helped.

keyboard

How to Adult After College

The honest, no-fluff guide to surviving your first year out of college that nobody gave you.

career

How to Successfully WFH

A practitioner's comprehensive guide to making remote work actually work — from someone who's been doing it since 2018.

remote-work

Notion vs Obsidian: An Honest Take From Someone Who's Used Both

A no-fanboy comparison of Notion and Obsidian covering local-first vs cloud, markdown vs blocks, plugins, pricing, collaboration, and privacy — to help you actually pick the right one.

obsidian

Promotions and the Real Truth

The uncomfortable truths about how promotions actually work in tech — no sugar coating.

career

Remote Work Advice for Those Who Hate It

For everyone who got forced into remote work and is struggling — your frustration is valid, and here's how to survive it anyway.

remote-work

Stop Framework Hopping and Find the Pillars

Stop chasing every new framework and learn the fundamentals that transfer everywhere — the pillars that outlast the hype cycle.

fundamentals

The Path Forward - The Path to Leading

What nobody warns you about when you move from individual contributor to team lead — and why it changes everything.

leadership

Use the Right Tool for the Job: Stop Forcing One Tool to Do Everything

Stop forcing one tool to do everything. Real examples of when using the wrong tool cost hours, and a framework for choosing tools based on the problem rather than tribal loyalty.

tools

WFH Lesson 2 - Routine and Setup

The routines and physical setup that make remote work sustainable — what I actually use and why each piece matters.

remote-work

WFH Lesson 3 - Knowledge Management

Why personal knowledge management is a remote work superpower, what tools to use, and how to build a second brain that pays dividends for your whole career.

remote-work

WFH Lesson 4 - Shake It Up Work from Different Spaces

Why working from the same spot every day is a trap, and how changing your environment unlocks different kinds of thinking and keeps remote work from going stale.

remote-work

Your PKM Workflow: How I Actually Manage Knowledge Without Losing My Mind

A walk through my personal knowledge management system using Obsidian, Readwise, Reader, Todoist, and Neovim — how information flows from capture to creation.

pkm

WFH Lesson 1 - Time Management

Why time management is uniquely harder at home, and the systems I actually use to own my day instead of letting it own me.

remote-work

Security for Developers: Essential Knowledge Every Developer Should Have

Essential security knowledge every developer needs to build secure applications, from basic principles to practical implementation techniques.

security

Testing Code Blocks

Testing enhanced code block functionality

Testing

Incident Response Playbook: Lessons from Real Cyber Attacks

Battle-tested strategies for handling security incidents under pressure

CyberSecurity

Terraform Security Best Practices: Infrastructure as Code Done Right

Secure your infrastructure from code to cloud with battle-tested Terraform patterns

DevOps

Building Secure REST APIs in Go: A Developer's Guide to Security-First Design

Security patterns and practices for production-ready Go APIs

Programming

Advanced Threat Hunting: Detection Strategies That Actually Work

Real-world threat hunting techniques from the trenches

CyberSecurity

Kubernetes Security Hardening: A DevSecOps Engineer's Playbook

Securing Kubernetes clusters from day zero to production

DevOps

Five Things to Help With Work From Home

Remote Work

Work from home

Containers from a DevSecOps Engineers perspective

What Software engineers should know about building docker files

Programming

Getting Started I want to learn DevOps

I want to learn DevOps

Getting Started

Getting Started How To Start Programming

How to start programing

Programming

Getting started in the world of Infosec

The world of Infosec "No sugar coating it!"

CyberSecurity