For the past year or so there have been a good number of news articles covering how remote work is dead, or that companies are pushing return to office policies that at times are pretty draconian. It’s understandable in part since many companies either started to build, or built huge new headquarters across the United States, which were sitting empty. Add in long term leases for other offices that they could not break. So you got the perfect storm of happy employees working from home, often proving to be just as productive, if not more so than in the office. And companies bleeding money on real estate that was sitting vacant. How about with Cybersecurity teams?
Continue readingAuthor Archives: admford
Constraint inspires creativity. When our backs are against the wall we come up with some amazing things. – Opinions on DeepSeek
So the entire AI market is up in arms and freaked out about DeepSeek. Stocks are plummeting and VCs are questioning their investments. How could a small team, with an extremely limited budget, make something comparable to the AI products of major American corporations that spent hundreds of millions, if not billions on development, data centers, and custom AI chips? Simple, US companies became complacent.
Continue readingAgile SecOps, Extrapolating What Can Be Used From Agile & DevOps
So at the end of March, I gave a talk at CypherCon in Milwaukee on this. While the title is a bit irreverent, with: When Management Asks You: “Do You Accept Agile As Your Lord and Savior?”, but it comes from multiple discussions with people in the Infosec Field. Too often someone from Senior Management comes in and says that the company or organization is going to apply Agile Methodologies in order to improve performance. But rarely, is this change attempted with change attempted at all levels of management and staff. This means that it’s either up to the Managers to push implementation of specific techniques, such as Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban, SaFE or other methodologies with their teams, with very limited input or acceptance from staff. Or someone from the staff has been assigned the position of Scrum Master and it’s their responsibility to implement these changes within their team, with little input or acceptance from their direct Manager or Management as a whole. This leads to constant failures that have lead to quotes like “Agile is dead”, “Agile doesn’t work”.
Continue readingDevOps – The Four Types of Work – Part 2
So after my initial post, I decided to dig a bit deeper into the processes of DevOps, rather than go directly into the tools used (Docker, Kubernetes, Jira, etc.). I’m doing this mainly because the general view of many people in IT that DevOps is more about the tools used, rather than the actual processes that are needed to achieve success with DevOps.
Continue readingDevOps – Much Ado About What? – Part 1
What is DevOps? It’s a common technology term that’s been bouncing around the past decade, and a useful thing to have on one’s resume. But what exactly are people talking about when they mention it? Is it the technology, or is it the business practices?
So what is it actually? Well It’s all of the above.
The basics of DevOps start out as the use of Agile programming methodologies in development, and adapting those methodologies into operations procedures (that is, the creation of servers, updating of servers, and management of business applications & processes). The concept was built from that, with the first DevOps days in Belgium in 2009 where the concept was defined. The Operations in DevOps also follow the ITIL model regarding process handling and definitions.
Continue readingApple and ARM – Part 4
So, based off of my last post, professionals may have a hard time working around the limitations of the new ARM based Macs. But what about your average user and their family, will they notice? The truth in this, is probably not.
Since the release of the M1 and M1Pro we’ve seen good performance and the computers actually being competitive regarding equivalent x86 models. With Apple’s Rosetta 2 translation software, the migration isn’t that painful for average users. Most apps work fine and don’t get a huge slow down. And for browsing, general productivity work, the average user won’t even notice the difference.
Continue readingApple and ARM – Part 3
Where does the ARM transition put Apple and others regarding virtualization and Windows? Well, the truth is, it doesn’t look good for anyone who NEEDs to use Windows. Apple’s Rosetta 2 software is flexible, but it’s unable to translate all the code that would be needed to run x86 copies of VMware or VirtualBox, and consequently, virtualize an x86 environment (be it 32 or 64 bit). Apple also seems to be including their own virtualization software in MacOS 16 “Big Sur”, as shown when they were running a Debian based VM on it.
Continue readingApple and ARM – Part 2
So, The Transition Kit that was presented Monday. No custom desktop CPU, no Thunderbolt ports, but 16GB of ram and 512GB SSD. Hey that’s still 10 GB of ram more than what comes standard on the iPad Pro with the same CPU!
But let’s talk realistically about this device. First of all, its not meant to represent anything that would be going into immediate production. It’s essentially a bodge where Apple redesigned an iPad Pro logic board to fit inside a Mac Mini case. Port wise, It will have 2x USB-C (3.1) ports, 2x USB-A (3.0) ports, and an HDMI 2.0 port. Networking, it has 802.11ac Wifi, Bluetooth 5.0 and Gigabit Ethernet. Essentially, it really is an iPad Pro stuck into a Mac Mini case. The HDMI port, Gigabit ethernet, and possibly the other USB ports are basically just your bog standard USB-C hub that provide the same exact ports that you can buy on Amazon for about $40. Only difference is that it is built into the logic board.
Continue readingApple and ARM – Part 1
So, Apple finally confirmed that it’s moving to ARM CPUs, something that was predicted for years by analysts. But what does it mean to consumers and professionals? Where does this leave professionals that need to use Windows? Those are some of the questions I’ll try to postulate in this and subsequent posts (Yes! I’ll be more active here!).
Continue readingAirline RFID Baggage Tags & Security
This year at DEFCON and on Twitter, I was asking people for their luggage tags for some research that I’m planning on doing. So I guess it’s time to explain what exactly I am looking into, what aspects of privacy I plan to maintain during my work, and the goals.
Irrelevant Hacks 