📌 Field Notes

Cybersecurity

Block the World: Country-Level Traffic Blocking with nftables

This post is part of a four-part series. Auto-updates close known vulnerabilities. Fail2ban blocks repeat offenders. SSH alerts and intrusion detection tell you what already happened. None of them stop the flood of connection attempts before they arrive. This post adds a layer in front of all of it: dropping

We Stopped Investing in Fundamentals

From 2015 to 2019, I was entrusted to oversee the daily operations of a technology training school in Virginia Beach called HyperLearning Technologies. Every week I had students who wanted to break into IT and cybersecurity: Veterans transitioning out of service; career changers who had been told to get certified;

We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Foundation Problem.

The SANS finding does not mean the talent conversation is over. It means the framing needs to shift from *how many* to *how ready*. That distinction changes what organizations prioritize, what hiring looks like, and what professional development is actually supposed to accomplish.