The Terminal Is a Conversation
My first Linux distribution no longer exists. I mention that because it lands two points at once: Linux is old enough to have history, and the skills transfer anyway...
Basics Series
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Vaultwarden and HashiCorp Vault: Different Jobs in the Same Secrets Architecture
Yesterday I wrote about moving autonomous-agent secrets out of a flat .env file. Why I kept Vaultwarden for people and recovery, added HashiCorp Vault for workloads, and treated identity, audit, PKI, and tested recovery as part of the deployment rather than follow-up work.
Moving Autonomous Agent Secrets Out of .env
For a long time, my autonomous agent found credentials the same way many applications do. Why I replaced a flat environment file with scoped Vaultwarden access, short-lived agent sessions, and a verified audit trail that now reaches Graylog and Wazuh.
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."
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...
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 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.
Many Calculations Before the Battle: Inside the Threat Modeling Labs of the Cybersecurity Architect's Handbook
In the last post I gave you the tour — the foundational labs, the eight operational categories...So let's start where the whole discipline starts: Category 1, Threat Modeling and Risk Assessment.
Foundations Before Firepower: The Full Lab Curriculum Behind the Cybersecurity Architect's Handbook, Second Edition
In the last post, I jumped straight to the top of the spire — the AI Security Automation capstone. But a capstone, by definition, sits on top of something. You can't appreciate the spire if you've never seen the cathedral....
AI
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Insights and Reflections "Deep Dive"
This "Deep Dive," generated through AI in a podcast style, provides a review of the main themes and important ideas presented in the "Cybersecurity Architect's Handbook."