Blogs

Want to become a Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Security Engineer?

Introduction In this post, I’m going to talk about a commonly discussed idea that cloud service providers (CSPs) are responsible for managing the risks associated with their services, in partnership with their customers.

Introduction I recently managed to pass the Microsoft Certified : Cybersecurity Architect (SC-100) exam.

Exam renewal experiences

Tips on applying AD Group Policy without rebooting

Curate your own news!

Cover Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash Introduction In this post, I’m going to talk about something that comes up often enough that its probably worth a post now!

This is a very quick update to make you aware of some changes I’ve made: There is a new Personal Blog section for my non-technical blog posts and I have moved my Job Interview and Invisible Illness posts there.

Detect and remove shadow admins

Cover Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash Introduction In this post, I’m going to talk about becoming a Microsoft Security Researcher.

Cover Photo by Joe Zlomek on Unsplash In this post, I’m going to talk about something that I discovered whilst working on a project a little while ago, some default behaviour in the Microsoft Azure Linux VM Agent which can lead to credential/secret…

Welcome to the latest of my Security Bytes posts, where I dig into areas of interest in Infosec/CyberSec, and offer my opinion.

Welcome to the latest of my Security Bytes posts, where I dig into areas of interest in Infosec/CyberSec, and offer my opinion.

Welcome to the latest of my Security Bytes posts, where I dig into areas of interest in Infosec/CyberSec, and offer my opinion.

This post is the first in a series of posts on the challenges of balancing privileged access with a robust security posture and a challenging delivery pipeline.

Intro I recently managed to pass the Microsoft Certified : Identity and Access Administrator (SC-300) exam.

Intro I recently managed to pass the Microsoft Certified : Azure Security Engineer Associate exam.

Intro If you need to capture network traffic from a Windows server, you may find that that standards or controls in your organisation prevent or forbid you from installing tools such as Wireshark on your Windows servers.

Intro In my first post in my Raspberry Pi NAS series, I mentioned I had issues with my external hard drives and had to buy an external (powered) USB hub, but I didn’t elaborate further.

Intro In my last post, I walked you through the basic setup and Operating System install of a Raspberry Pi.

Intro I recently replaced my Raspberry Pi 3B+ NAS/Media Centre with a Raspberry Pi 4B+ and it occurred to me that others may want to do likewise, so here goes.

Dealing with annoying display bugs

Image by mohammad takhsh on Unsplash Intro A quick post just to get me back into the routine, and to cover off an issue that I encountered recently, and how to resolve it.

In my last post, I mentioned that I’d hit a little snag when I was migrating my live site over to my new architecture.

Much later than planned, I’ve completed the cutover to my new Hugo static site in production, as written about in my last post.

In my recent posts, I spent a lot of time talking about Hugo and Static Websites in Azure.

Image by Cloudypixel on Unsplash In my last post.

Image by Max Bender on Unsplash Intro As you may or may not be aware, Gregor Suttie and Richard Hooper (Pixel Robots) came up with the awesome idea for Azure Advent Calendar which you can follow via the #azureadventcalendar on Twitter and via the YouTube…

Photo by Clément H on Unsplash In recent posts, I’ve talked about migrating from Grav to Hugo, at a high level.

Photo by Michael Longmire on Unsplash In my last post - I discussed my pending move of one of my websites from Grav on Azure WebApps to Hugo in Azure Storage Static Websites to optimise my costs.

Image by John Salvino on Unsplash From the beginning, the intention was to minimise the cost outlay, whilst still using and learning about Azure and I promised to keep you up to date on my experience, what worked, what didn’t etc.

Image by Alexandre Debiève on Unsplash Got a website?

Remote Talk I gave at SAUG

Image by AbsolutVision on Unsplash In my last post, we created a DNS zone and added a record pointing back to the public IP address of my home broadband connection.

Image by AbsolutVision on Unsplash The more that I use Azure cloud services, the more I think of ways to use them, either to do something new, or to replace some process or service I already use.

Image by Geralt on Pixabay Although all of my posts have been Azure related thus far, I did say back at the start that I may blog about other tech aspects that interest me or that I think others might find useful - and that’s what we have today!

Image by Cloudypixel on Unsplash In this post, I’ll show you how you can secure your secrets within your Logic Apps!

Image by Max Bender on Unsplash In my last post, Azure Functions - Securing resources with a function proxy, I talked about my work to develop a more Azure-centric solution to replace my current home security camera automation workflow.

Image by John Salvino on Unsplash As you may have guessed from my last post, I’ve been quite impressed with the serverless offerings in Azure of late - as a lifelong infrastructure person, the idea of being able to throw together functional code that

Image by Mervyn Chan on Unsplash Today I explore using a PowerShell function in Azure Functions to automate parts of my webapp deploment.

Image by Sean Patrick Murphy on Unsplash In my last post, Azure: Trigger a WebJob with Logic Apps and Kudu - Part 1, we built a KeyVault and a WebJob that will retrieve a storage key from KeyVault (using Managed Identity and REST APIs) and then backed up…

Image by Sean Patrick Murphy on Unsplash In my last post, Grav in Azure part 8 - Wrapping it Up, I mentioned a solution I came up with for my Grav project.

Image by Guille Álvarez on Unsplash In my last post, Grav in Azure part 7 - Backup Solutions, I discussed backup options for a grav blog running on a D1 WebApp instance, and other possible automation opportunities.

Image by Chris Yates on Unsplash In my last post, Grav in Azure part 6 - Optimising Grav for performance and security, I demonstrated how to configure Grav to optimise the performance and security of your grav website.

In my last post, Grav in Azure part 5 - Optimising Cloudflare for performance and security, I demonstrated how to configure Cloudflare to optimise the performance and security of your grav website (or indeed any largely static website).

Image by John Salvino on Unsplash In my last post, Grav in Azure part 4 - Adding DNS and Cloudflare to an App Service Web App, I demonstrated how to configure your Azure web app and its DNS to be managed by Cloudflare.

Image by John Salvino on Unsplash In my last post, Grav in Azure part 3 - Creating an Azure Web App with code deployed from Git, I demonstrated how to setup a webapp in Azure and deploy code to it from a Bitbucket repo with the Grav Blog Site skeleton cod…

Image by John Salvino on Unsplash In my last post, Grav in Azure part 2 - Creating a Git Repo with Grav code in it, I demonstrated how to setup a Git repo in Bitbucket with the Grav Blog Site skeleton code, ready to be deployed as a web app in Azure.

Image by John Salvino on Unsplash In this post, we’re going to create a repository in Bitbucket to host our Grav source code What you will need An account in a source control repository (I’m using Bitbucket, but Github would work just as well.)

Image by John Salvino on Unsplash In this post, I discuss my requirements for my blog, what I’ve chosen to build it with and why.