Welcome to my cyber security journey. After working as a systems administrator and spending time raising my son, I am embarking on a new journey – one in cyber security. My past experience prepared me for my participation in the SANS Women’s Immersion Academy where I learned all kinds of amazing things! My blog chronicles that ongoing journey and all sorts of technical details that I have learned along the way.
I’m not going to just “Apply anyway.”
Information security job descriptions are terrible – we’ve all heard and seen it. We see entry level job descriptions that require a CISSP, job descriptions with a laundry list of “must haves”, non-developer jobs requiring programming in at least three languages. We hear about bad job descriptions on Twitter, in job search webinars, and from…
A cornucopia of useful PowerShell tools
PowerShell has a number of useful commands and parameters that you may not know exist. Commands like Out-GridView and Format-Table are useful for controlling output interactively and parameters like -Confirm and -WhatIf make working with scripts easier. Other commands help you find other commands! Get-Command lists all commands that are installed on the computer (including…
Tired of waiting for the Event Viewer? Try Get-EventLog
I’m not a programmer and I have never wanted to be one. I grudgingly began learning PowerShell because it was the way of the future for Windows Systems Administration (Server Core, anyone?) From the first time I executed the Get-EventLog command, I was hooked on PowerShell. The Event Viewer in Windows is slow, I mean…
SANS Women’s Immersion Academy, COVID Style
Last month, I completed the SANS Women’s Immersion Academy, earning my GCFE (GIAC Certified Forensic Examiner), GCIH (GIAC Certified Incident Handler), and GSEC (GIAC Security Essentials) certifications. The SANS Women’s Immersion Academy is an accelerated training program that helps fill the skills gap in cyber security. The program is 6 months, and three classes are…
Where did System Image Backup go, Windows 10?
Have you ever needed to send your Windows 10 system back to the manufacturer for a repair and they told you to back everything up because they were going to wipe it? Or wanted to lend your laptop to a friend who wasn’t as careful about visiting “certain” websites as you are? Or needed to…
What the heck is SRUM?
Have you ever noticed the App history or Details tab in Task Manager? If you have, you will see your application history for the last 30 to 60 days. Where is this information stored? In the SRUM (System Resource Usage Monitor) database. This database stores which processes have been run including their full path and…
Happy 25th Anniversary, Windows 95!
Today is the 25th anniversary of Windows 95. It may not seem like it now, but Windows 95 was revolutionary. You could open a file several different ways – double click on the file, create a shortcut, right click and select Open! Never had we been able to right click on a file and decide…
What’s a jumplist?
While studying for my GIAC Certified Forensics Examiner certification, I read about jumplists (or jump lists in some documents). Even though I have used these many times, I had never heard the term. It’s easiest to describe what it is by what it looks like. When you right click on an item in the taskbar,…
fsutil – a useful tool
While studying for my GIAC Certified Forensic Examiner (GCFE) certification, I came across a paragraph in my study material that is explaining unallocated vs. allocated diskspace and what can be recovered. The material says: “Windows writes file information in sector-sized chunks. If the file is 1280 bytes in length and the cluster size is 2048,…
My 30-year, overnight cybersecurity journey
For my first blog post, I thought that I should tell my story. I was born in San Antonio, wait, too far back, let’s try again! Here is my cybersecurity journey: After graduating from college in Texas with a BBA in Computer Information Systems, I supported, consulted, and trained on Windows and IBM hardware and…
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