I have had a terrible year, like so many others in the world, during the covid pandemic. My family caught it early last year, and developed long covid symptoms. I lost all sense of smell and taste, was fatigued all the time, brain fog. Losing my military job, I bounced around until I landed on my feet with Malwarebytes. I decided to focus what energy I did have on my family. I miss writing, and I miss engaging with the community.. My career trajectory has completely changed. I thought I’d be working somewhere in middle management information assurance by now ..read more

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There is a new, old way of managing work out there. Agile is as much of a buzzword as artificial intelligence, machine learning, or automation. It is used in many board rooms of top companies and yet is still misunderstood. Agile originated in the world of software engineering and has been spreading out from there since. Agile methodology was born in 2001 when the agile manifesto was created. It outlined principles that are still in practice today, A new idea is Born in 2001, a group of software developers met to discuss issues they felt were keys to solving a ..read more

Recently, I listened to a podcast by Dr. Eric Cole, called Cyber 9/11. In it he discusses what makes the difference between a ‘world class CISO’ and a ‘world class security engineer’. It’s all about the business. A CISO can’t walk into the board room and start talking about all the technical vulnerabilities or dangers of technologies, operations or development. They have to speak in terms that business professionals will understand or they won’t get any positive results. A CISO needs to be able to explain how a risk will effect the bottom line, and why implementing security can reduce ..read more

Previously I talked about how I became a product owner. I am absolutely loving working in an Agile world. It requires a different mindset. One of the key things I like to focus on is the term capacity. It represents the total amount of time/effort an engineer can perform in a period of time. Typical agile periods of time are called iterations, and are usually 2 weeks long. When work comes in, it is written out into our backlog. We only work on what we commit to, so if we don’t have the capacity to get that new work done ..read more

So last time I spoke briefly about what I’ve been up to lately. In 2019 I began to transition into a team lead type role called a Product Owner. Learning the Scaled Agile Framework has been a little bit crazy. It’s built off of Agile, a method of managing work built for software engineering. My organization wanted to move our information assurance wing over to that management style and so we did. There are so many differences between what I’ve begun to just call ‘traditional’ project management and scaled agile framework. It actually incorporates a number of methodologies and uses ..read more

So 2020 has been nuts. I had big plans for the year, as did many people I know. Here in the US those all fell apart around March. I know you’ve all felt it too. I will not get into politics, but I count myself among those who read and heed medical advice when given by professionals. My family and I have played it safe, but with a lot of quality family time stuck indoors, I have not had as much time to write. Over the last year I’ve transitioned from pure cybersecurity to a new hybrid. I am the ..read more

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Three of the most common questions about cybersecurity defenders are: What is a cybersecurity defender? What does a cybersecurity defender do? How to become a cybersecurity defender? This post will answer these questions about cybersecurity defenders (or you can check out the other 4 cybersecurity roles) and provide an outlook on the job market. The 3 types of defenders are: Analysis Digital Forensics Incident Response What Is A Cybersecurity Defender? Cybersecurity Defenders are the watchdogs of cybersecurity. They use cybersecurity tools to protect enterprises. Every organizat ..read more

Three of the most common questions about cybersecurity defenders are: What is a cybersecurity defender? What does a cybersecurity defender do? How to become a cybersecurity defender? This post will answer these questions about cybersecurity defenders (or you can check out the other 4 cybersecurity roles) and provide an outlook on the job market. The 3 types of defenders are: Analysis Digital Forensics Incident Response What Is A Cybersecurity Defender? Cybersecurity Defenders are the watchdogs of cybersecurity. They use cybersecurity tools to protect enterprises. Every organizat ..read more