I occasionally have a conversation with a customer about how quickly their security monitoring systems generate alerts. Sometimes they are evaluating Microsoft’s first-party alerting. Other times they are integrating Microsoft security services with a third-party ticket management system and trying to understand why it takes so long for something to arrive in the queue. These… Read More: Your Alert Is Already Late »
I was poking around old folders and found an Excel spreadsheet I’ve kept for years to track work travel. After years as a road warrior, my travel has slowed significantly in a new role. I like the job, but I’ll admit I get a little stir-crazy when I go a month without setting foot on… Read More: Reconstructing a Travel Life with AI »
It has been a while since my last post. Work has been busy, I started a new semester in my applied artificial intelligence program, and I have escaped into a few video games when time permits. My current course focuses on machine learning operations, or MLOps. While working through this week’s material, I realized that… Read More: Making Sense of Notebooks »
For the past few years, shortly before the beginning of the school year, I have required my two children to attend what I call “Andrew University.” It is only an hour. We sit down as a family and talk about school, grades, priorities, technology, and some of the lessons I have learned from my own… Read More: Welcome to Andrew University »
I started thinking about the economics of artificial intelligence on the flight home from DEF CON. I had spent the week talking with security researchers, developers, technology companies, and vendors, nearly all of whom were discussing AI in one form or another. Some were using it to improve existing products. Others were building entirely new… Read More: The Strange Economics of Artificial Intelligence »
A few weeks ago, a viral prompt encouraged people to use AI to create illustrated resume or work profile images from their LinkedIn profiles. They were fun to look at, but they also made me wonder… What if, instead of visualizing your career, you visualized your life? That simple question led me down a surprisingly… Read More: The 40-Milestone Challenge »
Like many people, I’ve gotten into the habit of simply choosing the newest model and moving on. GPT-5? Sure. Claude Opus? Sounds good. Gemini 2.5 Pro? Why not? Beyond a general understanding that some models are better at coding, some reason more deeply, and some are optimized for speed or lower cost, I realized I… Read More: Understanding the Modern AI Landscape »
Every once in a while, a conversation reminds me that no matter how much time I’ve spent in this industry, there is always something new to learn. Recently, a coworker repeatedly used the word harness while discussing AI agents. It wasn’t the word itself that caught my attention. It was the way it was being… Read More: When Did “Harness” Become an AI Term? »
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a small private conference where one of the speakers from DARPA shared the story behind the AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC), a program I’ll discuss later in this article. Around the same time, I was researching many of these topics for work as organizations began asking… Read More: AI and the Future of Secure Code »
I was excited to see Microsoft embrace the OpenClaw concept at Build a few weeks ago with the introduction of a new service called Scout. I finally got around to spending some time with it this past week, and honestly, it’s been a pretty awesome experience. I actually had a blog post sitting in my… Read More: My Top 10 Vibe Coding Tips »
I was recently asked, how are automation rules managed in the Defender portal when multiple Sentinel workspaces are connected? I expected the answer to be simple. After all, I’ve spent a significant amount of time working with Sentinel, and not many things in this space come as a surprise anymore. I opened the Defender portal… Read More: Closer Look at Sentinel Automation in the Defender Portal »
I recently found myself needing to learn Microsoft Agent 365. Like most new Microsoft services, my first stop was the documentation. After an hour or two of focused reading, combined with some time in a lab environment clicking through the menus, I felt like I had a reasonably good understanding of what the service does… Read More: Agent 365: The Quick Version »
“Goddammit, Donut, quit typing in all caps.” “I AM NOT TYPING IN ALL CAPS, CARL. I AM USING AN AI CODING ASSISTANT. IT JUST THINKS EVERYTHING IS IMPORTANT.” That exchange never happened in Dungeon Crawler Carl, but after spending the last year vibe coding, it feels like it could have. Over the past year, I’ve… Read More: The Other 80% of Vibe Coding »
Have you heard about Microsoft’s new Claude Enterprise connector for Purview. At a high level, enterprise AI connectors are designed to collect and govern activity occurring within enterprise AI platforms. Depending on the platform and integration, that can include information such as user activity, utilization, prompts, responses, uploaded content, administrative actions, and other telemetry generated… Read More: Enterprise AI Connectors for Purview »
Recently, I found myself thinking about certification exams again. It had been several months since I last sat for a major certification exam, and while reviewing some of Microsoft’s newer AI certifications, I started asking myself a simple question: What should I take next? That led me down a rabbit hole of reviewing Microsoft’s current… Read More: Microsoft Security and AI Certification Roadmap »
I was flying home from a security conference in Boston on a Friday evening, enjoying an unexpected complimentary upgrade to business class, listening to Dungeon Crawler Carl, and reflecting on some of the conversations I had over the previous few days. During one of those conversations, I had confidently stated that a YouTube channel I… Read More: Building a YouTube Statistics Tracker at 35,000 Feet »
Why I Started Building This Several weeks ago, I set out to create a proper Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management (TVM) data connector for Microsoft Sentinel. What started as a relatively simple side project turned into a much larger effort involving API comparisons, ingestion architecture, scaling limitations, and a deeper understanding of how Defender exposure-management data… Read More: Sentinel TVM Snapshot Data Connector V2 »
Over the last two years, Microsoft’s AI ecosystem has expanded incredibly fast. What initially started as a relatively straightforward launch of Microsoft 365 Copilot has rapidly evolved into a much broader platform involving enterprise grounding, semantic intelligence, multi-model orchestration, AI agents, delegated workflows, governance platforms, and enterprise AI security controls. Along the way, Microsoft has… Read More: Understanding Microsoft’s Growing AI Ecosystem »
The phrase “AI Security” is becoming increasingly difficult to define because the risks change dramatically depending on how organizations interact with AI. Sometimes employees are simply using public AI services to summarize documents or generate content. Sometimes organizations deploy enterprise copilots grounded on internal data. Increasingly, organizations are building AI workflows and agents capable of… Read More: Securing AI Depends on How AI Is Being Used »
Security teams are starting to use and pay closer attention to tools like MCP servers, AI agents, GitHub Copilot, VS Code integrations, and other AI-assisted operational tooling. As organizations become more familiar with these tools, it naturally raises questions around the privacy and security implications of connecting them to enterprise systems. The real issue is… Read More: Authorized Access Unauthorized Destinations »