Last blog post was 8 years ago, time flies and shame on me!

A lot of things happened since 2012, among others, I took the opportunity to co-found an incident response team and the least we can say is that blue team work is not as bankable as offensive practices (that could clearly be a subject of a post) even thu the job is 🤩.

Nevertheless, while retrospecting on 2019, I wanted to re-open this blog by giving back to those who had inspired me this year. They will never read these lines but I hope you, reader, will get some inspiration too!

To whom should I say thank you?

• Mindfulness role model: 🙏 Matt “@mattifestation” Graeber is my 2019’s biggest influencer. Despite being an extremely talented security researcher, he is also trying to open people’s mind and change the infosec culture, I don’t know his impact on the infosec community but I can say he made me change! The road is long, I am failing every days but I keep track of my commitment…

• Digital Transformation role model: 🙏 Dino Dai Zovi: Ok, easy pick you will say as he was the keynoter of BH US this year… Fair play. Yet, I am following him since a conference in 2010 where I was lucky enough to dinner with him among others. I still remember his kindness and how he was genuinely interested in others thoughts and ideas.
  In his tweets, he is sharing his practices of working in a “cloud native” environment where “agile” means something. He is probably the one responsible of my commitment to CI/CD practices at work.

• Engineer role model: 🙏 Dane “@cryps1s” impressed me by his execution capabilities.
  He is the text school definition of an Engineer: Nothing is left to coincidence, he is solving problems in a structured way and don’t loose sight of his customers interests. He has amazing writing and technical skills and on top of that, he is unbelievably humble and knows how to make himself available to others.

I am limiting myself to talk only about these three persons on purpose because they meant a lot to me and deserved to be highlighted.

My 2019’s bookshelf

I committed to read one book per month in 2019 (and succeed!):

Not all of them were worth it but two will remain in my mind for a long time:

• “Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion” by Marshall B. Rosenberg changed my life for sure. It changed how I interact with people and how to deal with my emotions. It is a must-read!
• “Ultra-Solutions: How to fail most successfully” by Paul Watzlawick. If you are all about perfection and success, read this book to understand that life is a journey, not a destination and how to cope with failures. I guess this book was actually my trigger that made me wanting to change, this led me to cultivate a growth mindset instead of working harder and harder.