Network engineer in the making | 23 | USA | studyblr/bookblr/whatever
246 posts
Latest Posts by illusoryxdays - Page 7
Bright and Quiet - Deborah Quinn-Munson
American , b. 1950s
Oil on board , 48 x 31 in.
~2024-2025 moodboard~
this upcoming year, i'm focusing on my career goals, personal wellness, and my spirituality.
the longer i work in corporate america, the more i feel l like an old guy who's been working at the company for 30 years and doesn't give a shit anymore. yes i'm about to retire and yes i'm going to reply to your email with an ok with a period and no exclamation marks. get fucked.
Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary, August 1921
Finally passed my web development exam! Onto statistics.
i don't "date" and i don't "chill" and i don't "hang out." i make pacts. i swear oaths. i forge unbreakable bonds. this makes me a cool breezy person to take on road trips et cetera
If life is a never ending loop of dirty dishes and laundry then that means life is a never ending loop of home cooked meals and comfy clean clothes
remember why you started
i don't belong and my beloved neither do you
“My main goal in life right now is to be happy.. thats all”
— Unknown
wednesday 14/07/2024
today was an absolutely beautiful day
♫ bestfriend - satellite lovers ♫
a bit of a rant but why in the hell are technical information technology (not management) degrees in the business college at most four year unis in the US? as someone who is in the field and is getting a B.S in an IT related field, business classes & accounting are absolutely useless for troubleshooting infrastructure issues. the actual IT classes are so out of date that the technologies you learned about in school are end of life and obsolete once you're actually working. let's actually have relevant degrees for IT professionals that prepare them to support an ever expanding digital world. side note: i absolutely love my uni for having relevant degrees. it's helping so much with my career <3
An Introduction to Cybersecurity
I created this post for the Studyblr Masterpost Jam, check out the tag for more cool masterposts from folks in the studyblr community!
What is cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity is all about securing technology and processes - making sure that the software, hardware, and networks that run the world do exactly what they need to do and can't be abused by bad actors.
The CIA triad is a concept used to explain the three goals of cybersecurity. The pieces are:
Confidentiality: ensuring that information is kept secret, so it can only be viewed by the people who are allowed to do so. This involves encrypting data, requiring authentication before viewing data, and more.
Integrity: ensuring that information is trustworthy and cannot be tampered with. For example, this involves making sure that no one changes the contents of the file you're trying to download or intercepts your text messages.
Availability: ensuring that the services you need are there when you need them. Blocking every single person from accessing a piece of valuable information would be secure, but completely unusable, so we have to think about availability. This can also mean blocking DDoS attacks or fixing flaws in software that cause crashes or service issues.
What are some specializations within cybersecurity? What do cybersecurity professionals do?
incident response
digital forensics (often combined with incident response in the acronym DFIR)
reverse engineering
cryptography
governance/compliance/risk management
penetration testing/ethical hacking
vulnerability research/bug bounty
threat intelligence
cloud security
industrial/IoT security, often called Operational Technology (OT)
security engineering/writing code for cybersecurity tools (this is what I do!)
and more!
Where do cybersecurity professionals work?
I view the industry in three big chunks: vendors, everyday companies (for lack of a better term), and government. It's more complicated than that, but it helps.
Vendors make and sell security tools or services to other companies. Some examples are Crowdstrike, Cisco, Microsoft, Palo Alto, EY, etc. Vendors can be giant multinational corporations or small startups. Security tools can include software and hardware, while services can include consulting, technical support, or incident response or digital forensics services. Some companies are Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), which means that they serve as the security team for many other (often small) businesses.
Everyday companies include everyone from giant companies like Coca-Cola to the mom and pop shop down the street. Every company is a tech company now, and someone has to be in charge of securing things. Some businesses will have their own internal security teams that respond to incidents. Many companies buy tools provided by vendors like the ones above, and someone has to manage them. Small companies with small tech departments might dump all cybersecurity responsibilities on the IT team (or outsource things to a MSSP), or larger ones may have a dedicated security staff.
Government cybersecurity work can involve a lot of things, from securing the local water supply to working for the big three letter agencies. In the U.S. at least, there are also a lot of government contractors, who are their own individual companies but the vast majority of what they do is for the government. MITRE is one example, and the federal research labs and some university-affiliated labs are an extension of this. Government work and military contractor work are where geopolitics and ethics come into play most clearly, so just… be mindful.
What do academics in cybersecurity research?
A wide variety of things! You can get a good idea by browsing the papers from the ACM's Computer and Communications Security Conference. Some of the big research areas that I'm aware of are:
cryptography & post-quantum cryptography
machine learning model security & alignment
formal proofs of a program & programming language security
security & privacy
security of network protocols
vulnerability research & developing new attack vectors
Cybersecurity seems niche at first, but it actually covers a huge range of topics all across technology and policy. It's vital to running the world today, and I'm obviously biased but I think it's a fascinating topic to learn about. I'll be posting a new cybersecurity masterpost each day this week as a part of the #StudyblrMasterpostJam, so keep an eye out for tomorrow's post! In the meantime, check out the tag and see what other folks are posting about :D
Dear everyone who is currently working on a Thing, whatever that Thing may be,
Good luck with the Thing. You can do the Thing. You will do the Thing. You just have to do the Thing.
Best wishes,
Someone who is also doing a Thing
~Sunday, August 4th 2024~
This weekend was exhausting. Manifesting a good start to the week. Otherwise, I did a bit of CSS yesterday and I only have two more chapters left on the course material.
@ august please be a little gentle with me I’m so tired
ed zitron, a tech beat reporter, wrote an article about a recent paper that came out from goldman-sachs calling AI, in nicer terms, a grift. it is a really interesting article; hearing criticism from people who are not ignorant of the tech and have no reason to mince words is refreshing. it also brings up points and asks the right questions:
if AI is going to be a trillion dollar investment, what trillion dollar problem is it solving?
what does it mean when people say that AI will "get better"? what does that look like and how would it even be achieved? the article makes a point to debunk talking points about how all tech is misunderstood at first by pointing out that the tech it gets compared to the most, the internet and smartphones, were both created over the course of decades with roadmaps and clear goals. AI does not have this.
the american power grid straight up cannot handle the load required to run AI because it has not been meaningfully developed in decades. how are they going to overcome this hurdle (they aren't)?
people who are losing their jobs to this tech aren't being "replaced". they're just getting a taste of how little their managers care about their craft and how little they think of their consumer base. ai is not capable of replacing humans and there's no indication they ever will because...
all of these models use the same training data so now they're all giving the same wrong answers in the same voice. without massive and i mean EXPONENTIALLY MASSIVE troves of data to work with, they are pretty much as a standstill for any innovation they're imagining in their heads
Here’s a video so you can hear the water and the thrushes. I took it for you because you couldn’t be there. <3
Wed, July 31st, 2024
It's been a bit but a lot has happened recently. I passed the Network+ certification about two weeks ago. Since then, I've picked up my web development class again aiming to finish before I start a new job in a couple of weeks. I rediscovered? a cute coffee shop near my house to study at and I spent about two hours there today. The coffee was a 7/10. I nearly finished the 5th chapter of my online textbook. I'm ready to be done with this class.
this is a reminder that you don't need an ✨aesthetic✨ place to study/work. post your messy notes and scratched up desk. it's so refreshing to see normal study spaces. just because something isn't perfect, doesn't mean it isn't beautiful.
I come across a great site to learn coding, I don’t see a lot of people talking about it tho. (There is an app too!)
This site has python 101 for free (and many another, tho course from 102 and up aren’t free)
Its has a cute design and great at explaining the small details that some teachers don’t explain ✨
There is also many exercises in each chapter of the lessons.
You can check more about it from there official site ✨
Happy coding you all 🫶🏻
it's exam day for Network+! I have been studying 2+ hours daily for this stupid cert for weeks on end.
Affirmations for the day
I will pass this test because I am knowledgeable of all areas of the content.
I have the problem solving skills necessary to figure out the answers to the questions.
I prepared adequately for this and I will pass.
~life update~
the past few days i've been really rough. i went out to dinner to celebrate one of my bestie's 21'st bday which was really fun. the beef short rib was super good. however, i started feeling really bad when I got home and i went to the dr the next morning. i tested negative for covid, flu, and strep so really no idea what's going on there but i got some lovely antibiotics so that's helping a bit. they did a throat culture to test for epstein-barr virus (mono) so answers soon?
i'm supposed to be taking the network+ certification tomorrow so we'll see if that happens but probably not. I can't even sit up straight bc of a killer headache. going to try and knock out some studying today for the holiday and tomorrow.
~Friday June 28th 2024~
Studying at home tonight and finally!! Finished Network+ study videos. Tomorrow is PBQ and labs day and hopefully Sunday is test day. I haven’t posted many pictures using my PC setup so I figured I’d do that since it looks halfway decent today.
Productive for: 3 hrs
lately i've been having to remind myself that it's okay i'm not making as much academic progress as quick as i'm used to. i have a pet and a full time career that i'm juggling in addition to trying to be an adult. it's alright to let yourself be and rest after a hard day's work, even if that work wasn't academic.