ME!

There’s this unsettling feeling as my fingers type the keyboard knowing this is the only post I have for the year 2024 on my personal blog. However, it is that time of the year again to do the annual tradition of writing a year-in-review. It’s serves as an anchor of reflection for the closing year and something that I know I will use as a reference point in the next one (I know because it has done exactly that in the past two years).

2024 Focus Area Recap

Do a few things better

I wanted to refine my expertise and experiences in a few areas of life (primarily the craft of writing) and career (deepening my security knowledge as a security engineer) in 2024. It feels satisfying knowing I did well on that front by pursuing writing in publications like The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter doing a 2 part series on the topic ‘What is Security Engineering’- Part1 and Part2. Also, a few other interesting ones include authoring two chapters in the O’Reilly Media book 97 Things Every Application Security Professional Should Know and the Dark Reading article The Imperative for Robust Security Design in the Health Industry. All these gave me the experience of refining my writing, learning a bit more about writing for a broader audience and the art of editing.

Learn and Teach

The highlight on this front for me was to be invited to give a guest lecture at the Sonoma State University’s Computer Science department on the topic of ‘State of Cloud Security’. Teaching has been a passion of mine and getting the opportunity to do so at an academic level was quite fulfilling.

I got to deliver a talk to a small group of smart woman in cybersecurity practitioners at the Day of Shecurity conference sometime earlier this year.

I did a fun brown bag session at Datadog during the learning week on the topic of ‘Job Crafting’.

I also served as the Co-chair for the Call for Proposals team at The Diana Initiative conference and got to learn the skill of how conference proposals process work all the way to putting together a well balanced schedule for it.

Adjacently, I collabed with Swathi Joshi to publish a template for Security Design Reviews.

On the learning front, I embedded with the Cloud security team at Datadog for one entire quarter and towards the end, also successfully did the AWS Certified Security – Specialty cert.

Balanced Work-Life Integration

This one I would say I did fairly well however, there’s a long way for me to go on it. I had some peaks and valleys in the pursuit of this particular goal and knowing that it is something one needs to do for a lifetime (of their career), I’ll be ok exercising patience to get it right (mostly). I now know what works for me and what does not and the real skill would be to harness my understanding of it on a regular such that it will show up in maintaining the quality of my life in terms of wellness, satisfaction, meaningful relationships and happiness. I spent real quality outdoor time this year and focused my travels on personal front instead of more professional ones.

2025 Focus Areas

Do a few things better

In the spirit of keeping the same high level goal, I’d like to set my eyes upon optimizing for depth and maintaining consistency in what I choose to pursue. This would mean looking for opportunities that will let me take my skills from what I have done in 2024 one step further, one level deeper.

Learn and Teach

My commitment to learning and teaching persists and now I know I got the chops to do that too. So, I’d be looking to explore creating a structured format to teach.

Deep focus and a better reading routine

I want to carve out focused time to engage in creative activities that demand deep work. Also, I’d look to re-establish and re-cultivate my reading habit and behaviors to read at longer stretches of time.