// hello, world
Technologist and business owner. Writing code since the Fortran days, online since the ARPANET, and still at it today.
You can visit one of my companies at FromTheRockies.com. I have several others, but that’s the primary one.
// the book
Written for the non-technical person who wants to sharpen their defenses against the hurricane of online hacking attempts. It reads in under a few hours — and you can put the knowledge into action immediately.
// about me
I’ve been in the technical business world since 1983, writing code all the way from the Fortran days up to the present — Basic, C, C++, assembler, Perl, JavaScript, and dozens of languages in between. My technical specialty is email marketing, email services, and everything relating to email technologies.
// what makes it different
What sets my online experience apart are the various contract engagements I’ve had over the years with some very large, and very well hidden, security groups. I’ve had the opportunity to build systems designed to watch — in great detail, down to the individual chip-level — exactly what hackers can do.
It’s like building a house, leaving the door wide open with a sign that says “make yourselves at home,” and watching what happens.
It was actually quite fun. You get to see the absolute brilliance some people have — the kind of brilliance that could change the world for the better, if that were their intent. It also shows how far off the normal path some people wander, deep into the woods. The saying “a few donuts shy of a dozen” definitely fits a few of the people I’ve observed.
// physical pentesting
I’ve also been hired as a physical pentester many times. A business or agency pays me to try to find my way in and see whether there are any holes in their physical security. It’s the most exciting work I’ve done because it really brings out your whole bag of tricks. Many of these highly advanced tricks were learned in counter-surveillance classes and deep-cover private investigator courses in Denver, Colorado.
While I can’t go into much detail, it involves a lot of sitting and watching, delivering unordered food, asking to speak with various people, being an HVAC technician, wandering around “lost,” and a whole lot of blending in. Think of it like being a tiny spider trying to find the way into a building. There is always a crack. All of the work was done above-board, very professional, and involved a LOT of note taking. The goal: Making sure the bad guys are kept out and the good guys are let in.
A note to anyone that owns a company: Always have your staff check ID's and verify the reason someone is in your lobby. The number of times I could walk into the heartbeat of a business, sometimes even escorted, was stunning.
// the #1 lesson
You can’t truly trust anyone unless you have a long, long-term, soul-level connection with them.