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Oracle Cloud challenges

• 1 minute to read
• Monday, 6th of April 2020
• • cloud
  • education
  • linux
  • security

I love challenges, and working with Oracle products has always been a challenge for me. This love/hate relationship started ~20 years ago when I could not set up the first version of Oracle Internet Directory, following the documentation word by word! I had to "fix" several scripts to make it install, and in the end, even though it installed, it still wouldn't work... It was the only product I cared enough to remember that failure after so many years. Or maybe, the only product I failed to tame.

Networking concerns in virtual environments

• 2 minutes to read
• Thursday, 2nd of April 2020
• • networking
  • virtualization
  • security

Some months ago I bought a desktop system. I hadn't had one for years, but a very strange and unexpected need came up; I wanted to play games with my son who lives in Greece, in an attempt to spend a bit more time with him, even virtually. I bought and built a desktop system based on AMD's excellent Ryzen line, but that's for another time. On that computer, and as it would be used predominantly for games, I installed MS Windows. That is another thing that hadn't happened in my household for decades!

SSL certificate revocation gotchas

• 2 minutes to read
• Wednesday, 4th of March 2020
• • web
  • security

As you may have heard, Let's Encrypt revoked several certificates today that were issued through a faulty process. Read on for the details, and on how to identify the revoked certificates themselves.

Risk understanding and coronavirus

• 2 minutes to read
• Tuesday, 3rd of March 2020
• • risk management

Due to the Coronavirus outbreak there are lots of voices saying that we shouldn't care so much - especially if we haven't vaccinated for the flu which shows a lack of diligence on our side.

That could not be more wrong! People who say that understand ZERO about risk management, and since my social bubble is mostly security and risk management people, I find that very alarming.

Let me explain:

How to budget for security?

• 6 minutes to read
• Friday, 8th of November 2019
• • business
  • security
  • budget
  • management

I often get into discussions about budgets and how much a company should invest in its security program. There is no easy answer because the problem we are trying to solve has many unknowns.

There are many ways one may address this question, the main one being a rule of thumb.

Long time no write

• 1 minute to read
• Friday, 27th of September 2019

Indeed I know I haven't posted for long. It's not that I don't have anything to say, but I'm trying to find a balance between posting something about things I know, and making sure the readers do not necessarily assume that this is how we do things in SUSE.

Getting there...