Welcome to my blog! This will be a journal of my explorations of Internet security and other IT issues that catch my interest. My background is in firewalls, intrusion prevention and vulnerability management, as well as other stuff like UNIX, DNS administration, backups and disaster recovery. I might have called it “perimeterblog”, but that would have nailed me down too tight, and anyway where is the perimeter these days? Perhaps more on that later.

The original stimulus for starting this blog was my revision work for the CISSP exam. Just slogging through study materials learning the correct exam answers doesn’t work for me (and I don’t find the CISSP study materials particularly well written either). Like Daniel Miessler I like to pull a subject apart and then put together my own learning materials. I hope that what I produce will be of use to others. Of course I’ll be exposing my understanding (or lack of understanding) of technical issues in the process: I’m hoping that my readers will call me out on any errors I make, so that I’m not spreading misinformation.

I strongly believe that good engineering can be beautiful and that beauty in design matters: beautiful and elegant solutions that meet a need with economy and clarity are likely to stand the test of time much better than ugly and bodgy ones. I’m a fan of that saying attributed to Einstein: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”.

I also believe in the importance of history. Computing is full of vestiges: features that were once functional but are no longer so, and survive through inertia or the need for backwards compatibility. You very often can’t understand why something is the way it is unless you understand the background. As a former archaeologist I’m always interested in the historical dimension.

I intend to start with a series on IPv6, so stay tuned.