Recovering Luddite?

Growing up Mennonite in Lancaster County with no computer, and no television, only to become a Digital Forensic Analyst and Incident Response Specialist living in New York City, has been quite a journey. My friends tell me the uniqueness of my life requires a blog, but I tell them, I haven't changed much, really.

Personal blog, nothing on here represents my employer.

Successful Threat Hunting

I received a very prestigious award this past week at work, arguably one of the biggest my company doles out. Since the fanfare and graphics were internal only and labeled as “Confidential”, I wanted to take a moment to share with you one of the big reasons why I believe, I received that award.

The title graphic used in this post is from an upcoming (and recurring) FREE class taught by Chris Brenton over at Active Counter Measures (a John Strand/Black Hills Information Security company). The first SANS class I ever took was back in 2007 and taught by Mr. Brenton, it was called “SANS SEC502 Perimeter Protection In-Depth"...back in the day, when I scanned the cert, I don’t even think I had a color scanner LOL! So how does all this tie into my award? On April 4, 2020 when so many of us were on lockdown due to COVID-19, Active Counter Measures offered their first free Threat Hunting course, taught by none other than Chris Brenton. Back then, it was a 4-hour class, which I took, and was blown away. Chris has since taught that course a total of 14 times, and I have taken it, as many. Several times after taking that class, I turned right around and used said new-found knowledge in my own threat hunting. I remember a couple of times after reviewing my notes the next day, I had a question which I put into the Active Counter Measures Discord server and Chris got right back to me. Folks, who does this, and for FREE?! Who consistently takes an entire Saturday to teach a 6-hour class for nothing! Seriously, what a gift to our community! I encourage everyone reading this to take the next class on Saturday, April 22nd, 2023 from 11 AM to 5 PM (ET). You won't regret it, and trust me, fun fact...you might just find yourself emerging from a rabbit hole, clutching a very, very real, and shiny object!