Posts

Security scanning Docker containers with InSpec

Docker makes running containers incredibly simple, a big reason for its popularity. I can quickly and easily run an Nginx container on my workstation, whether Mac, Windows or Linux based.
Aug 14, 2017 5 min read

Using InSpec to DevOps GDPR compliance

Have you heard of GDPR? It stands for the General Data Protection Regulation. It’s an update to the original data protection regulations from 1995 and reflects the new ways that we store and process personal data in an increasingly digital society.
Aug 12, 2017 4 min read

Automating Windows Local Security Policy

Enforcing security policy is tough, especially in a Windows environment where you are NOT using Group Policy. Think about usage patterns for Windows server on cloud. GPO certainly doesn’t always apply.
Aug 3, 2017 2 min read

Using Travis to verify a Cloud Formation Template

Deploying infrastructure in the cloud is fun. Deploying into AWS is even more fun. Clicking buttons is not fun. You should use a Cloud Formation template. AWS CloudFormation gives developers and systems administrators an easy way to create and manage a collection of related AWS resources, provisioning and updating them in an orderly and predictable fashion.
Aug 3, 2017 3 min read

InSpec on Azure at Tech Days NL 2016

Tech Days NL ran on thr 4th and 5th of October 2016 at the RAI centre in Amsterdam. It was a great event with an amazing number of tracks running in parallel.
Nov 5, 2016 1 min read

InSpec and Chef - compliance as code

InSpec is an opensource language that can be used to assess the state of systems. It can form integration tests, but more importantly, with additional meta information, can create so called compliance profiles.
Oct 22, 2016 2 min read

Slow Knife? Speed up with Knife rehash

The Chef DK includes a tool called Knife. This is primarily used for interaction with remote resources in Chef, such as the Chef Server and Chef managed nodes, but can be used for managing other remote systems too.
Oct 7, 2016 2 min read

Bootstrapping Windows nodes behind a firewall with Knife

Using knife to bootstrap a node to be managed with Chef is a fundamental part of the Chef workflow, especially for dev and test purposes. When you bootstrap a node you are preparing the node to communicate with the Chef Server so it can download the cookbooks and recipes you have defined in its run-list, and eventually match the state you have defined in your Chef code.
Sep 14, 2016 2 min read

Installing .NET 4.6.1 on Windows Server 2012 R2 with Chef

Recently I was lucky enough to take part in a ‘hackathon’ with Chef, Microsoft and a partner company based in Norway. It was a great week working with some amazing people!
Jul 20, 2016 3 min read

View speaker notes whilst presenting over a screen share on OSX

I deliver many presentations over various teleconferencing software from my Mac Book Pro. If you like to use speaker notes in presenter view in Powerpoint then this poses a problem. You have a single screen so when sharing it how can you also view notes?
Jul 1, 2016 1 min read