We launched a podcast!

Monica and I launched a podcast!! Are you ready to explore the fascinating crossroads of relationships, entrepreneurship, and adventure? Love, Business, and Luggage is a podcast that dives into the real stories behind the people who are balancing love and business while navigating the journey of life—sometimes with a suitcase in hand. Whether you’re an entrepreneur looking for inspiration, someone curious about the modern dating landscape, or just love a good story from the road less traveled, this podcast is for you.

The Rise of AI

The Rise of AI Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic concept—it’s a part of our everyday lives. From personalized recommendations and intelligent assistants to cybersecurity automation and data-driven insights, AI is transforming how we work, learn, and connect. Its ability to process vast amounts of data and identify patterns has made it an invaluable tool across countless industries, driving efficiency and innovation like never before. Recently, I took a big step in my own AI journey by earning my AWS AI Practitioner Certification.

HUGO

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.

Certs...

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.

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.

Running Pi-Hole in AWS

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.

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.

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.

Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF)

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.

Using Lightsail for WordPress

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.

Reading List

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

I moved the site to AWS!

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!