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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