Clayton’s Blog
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This is simply a place for me to share my thoughts on all things… a blog about me and what interests me. I hope you enjoy!
Please note the opinions shared on this site do not necessarily represent those of my employer and are mine alone.
I just returned from a trip to Costa Rica, which gave me a chance to think about why I travel and what it does for me. Let me start by acknowledging that I am blessed. I am blessed to be born where I was and have the opportunities I have had to afford the finances and ability to travel. I know that not everyone can do this. However, if you have the means, I really encourage you to.
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After using Wordpress for a number of years, I have decided to move this site to Hugo, hosting it on S3. This site isn’t highly dynamic, so it didn’t need complex resources or the need to be hosted in EC2. I searched for a static website editor and frankly was overwhelmed. I settled on Hugo, but it is far from perfect. I am sure there are professionals that are GREAT at Hugo, but I am NOT one of them.
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Recently the “TEK NRD” license plate changed to a new car. Welcome our 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning to the family!
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If you are here, it’s possible you saw me on the road! Welcome! Please have a look at my personal website or visit my business, Innojacent! Ford F-150 Lightning
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I sold my Tesla and moved to a BMW iX! I love EVs and am so excited to try a new one!!! (Note: My wife “took” this one from me… I now drive this.)
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Its odd to me the things many of us collect. In fact the thought process that even goes into collecting is interesting to me. People collect all sorts of things, sports cards, stamps, mini figures, you name it. Heck, I know someone (looking at you Tom Proctor) that collects bed pans! Many of us are into collecting something. As you are about to see, I don’t even understand the thing I collect.
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Well, it has certainly been awhile since I posted anything of any real value. I’ve been a bit busy with certifications, opening a second office at Impact Family Wellness, work, tech stuff (more on this to come), and most importantly… life. All of those things are interesting (to me), but what I’d like to focus on are the two certifications I recently completed. First, let me provide some background on me.
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The holidays are a great time to focus on your education to further your career aspirations and re-energize you in your work. This holiday I decided to focus on diving in more deeply into AWS. In my daily job, I rarely get to put hands on the keyboard and dig into projects. My role is more advisory than ‘doing the thing’. However, digging into the details is something I love to do and have used these holidays on a couple of small projects.
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Scooter Update- Apollo Phantom v2
I teased this a couple months ago, but never did a follow up post. Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten to ride my scooter as much as I had hoped, just due to weather and being busy. However, the time I have spent with it… HOLY COW! It is so much fun! Quick, fast, more nimble than I am capable of, stops quickly, and has great range. My ‘scooter journey’ started with an Inmotion L9.
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The Firewall is DEAD… Long Live the Firewall!
I love firewalls!!! LOVE THEM!!!! I have this weird sense of power when I am setting one up, like I am standing at the gates protecting the village from the angry hoard of marauding thugs. I’m one of the good guys and you shall not pass!!! I know… super nerdy, but it is true. However, we need to talk about a reality affecting all security professionals. Next Gen Firewalls are becoming less helpful.
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Let me start this post with a solid statement. As it stands today, the Tesla Supercharging network is the best charging network in the country. Full stop, period. It is what gives me pause about moving to another EV car brand. I have a reservation on a Cadillac Lyriq and my only pause about that car is that is won’t work with the supercharger network. So, with that being said… we need a much better network in this country!
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The interview process at AWS can be daunting! I was very fortunate that I received some great advice when going through my interview process. Much of that I will try to distill in this blog post. First a word about Amazon and the hiring process. Although, the process itself is daunting, stressful, and hard work; it is designed with the candidate in mind. Now, truthfully it doesn’t feel this way when you are going through it.
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For those of you that may not be familiar with Pi-Hole, it is a DNS resolver that you run on your network to prevent adware. It operates very simply…. you point your clients to it for DNS, it compares that against a list of know tracking/ad sites. If it matches it fails to resolve the DNS query… if it doesn’t match it resolves DNS using an upstream provider. It also caches previous DNS queries, reducing lookup time by keeping it locally.
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A look at MFA and recent incidents
[Disclaimer: In this post I discuss a breach involving Cisco. I am a former employee of Cisco. All information discussed is public and no information from my employment is being utilized in this post.] Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) has long been held as a bastion of cybersecurity. In my opinion, it is still a must, but some recent incidents have highlighted that even MFA can be circumvented. Let’s discuss the incidents and ways to prevent this from happening to you.
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I am so excited! I am waiting on my new e-scooter. Last week I ordered an Apollo Phantom v2 scooter and have the v3 upgrade on pre order. I’m pretty stoked. I’ll update you all when it arrives. In the meantime, let me know if you are in my area and want to do a ride (when it arrives)! UPDATE: My scooter has FINALLY shipped. When it arrives, it has will have taken a HALF A MONTH to get to my front door.
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Tipping the scales…. Cybersecurity as a Differentiator
For many years software and SaaS organizations have seen Cybersecurity as simply a liability on the balance sheet; a required cost of doing business that adds little value. The business likened it to insurance. You have to have it in hopes you don’t use it. It really only has a value if something bad happens. You see where I am going with this. (As a side note, at its worst cybersecurity has been used as merely a checkbox.
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Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework
During BlackHat and Defcon, AWS and others made a joint announcement around the creation of the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF). I’d encourage everyone to take a quick look at that announcement. Why I feel this is significant is really due to the companies that were involved in making this happen. This is a situation where industry leaders came together to create a framework that will be made available to everyone.
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For some time I had been running WordPress on a Raspberry Pi Zero. At first it was more of an experiment. I had wanted to first stand up a very basic webpage, but then thought… “I wonder if a Pi Zero could run WordPress”. The answer… it can… SLOWLY. Considering I expected zero traffic, this wasn’t a problem. Now, my ambitions have taken me further and the reality of how efficient and value driven the cloud is has been fully realized.
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Books This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War by Fred Kaplan The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War by Malcolm Gladwell Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World by Bruce Schneier Micromessaging: Why Great Leadership is Beyond Words by Stephen Young To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others by Daniel Pink The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security by Kevin Mitnick Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary– by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond Websites
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I decided to go through the AWS experience myself. After hosting my website and other services from home, I jumped both feet into the AWS cloud. I’m around the cloud all day with my job, but I already had everything working at home. Already I have noticed how much faster this is and how little there is to worry about. More to come on my home network journey into the cloud!
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