About
The best number is 73. You’re probably wondering why. 73 is the 21st prime number, its mirror, 37, is the 12th and its mirror, 21, is the product of multiplying, hang on to your hats, 7 and 3. … In binary 73 is a palindrome, 1001001, which backwards is 1001001.
– Sheldon Cooper
Welcome to my Github website. Many of my projects are discussed in blog articles on this site.
I’m a cybersecurity professional with 20 years of experience developing a broad range of security solutions including user-entity behavioral analytics, threat management, and content filtering. I am currently a data analytics engineer at Forcepoint where I work on Forcepoint’s Insider Threat Solutions.
I am involved with the Cloud Security Alliance Top Threats Working Group where I research and report on security issues affecting cloud services
I have a passion for sharing technical ideas through involvement in the open-source community and writing.
When I’m not slaving away over a hot keyboard – yes, I do have a life outside technology – I like spending time with my family, cooking, and attending the performing arts – theater, concerts, and movies. My family and I are ardent cat lovers and volunteer with feline rescue organizations fostering cats for future adoption.
My Blogging History
I got started with blogging at Trend Micro back in 2011 when I wrote a blog on what to do when your Facebook account is stolen for Trend Micro’s internal facing employee social network. The blog was inspired by advice I gave to one of my son’s high school teachers when that very thing happened to him. The folks at Trend Micro’s Simply Security website liked the piece enough to publish it on their site. A few blogs later they invited me to join the team as one of their regular bloggers. Shortly thereafter, I started contributing code on Github and writing associated blogs for my own personal website which ultimately became this site, vichargrave.github.io.
Over the years I have written a considerable amount of software project documentation including: design specifications, functional requirements, engineering support training materials and software test set up tutorials. Many years ago I taught a course on Unix Network Programming for UC Berkeley Extension. Writing to explain how things work and are put together has always been a passion of mine.
Cloud Security Alliance
One of my outside projects is working with the Cloud Security Alliance Top Threats Working Group. We are a group of security analysts, devops, and software development folks who research and write publications about security threats to cloud computing infrastructures. Our most recent publication is Top Threats to Cloud Computing - The Egregious 11. I wrote the section on insider threats.
Feral Cat Rehabilitation
My family and I are very much into cats. We have 4 of our own. We also work with bay area a4a to foster and help socialize cats that are rescued from the streets. Our goal is to help them feel comfortable being around people and eventually adopted by families that can give these beautiful animals the loving homes they deserve.
Free Stuff Licensing
All of my code is licensed according to the Apache License, Version 2.0. You are free to use it how ever you want. I’ve made every effort to test the code so it works according to the tests outlined in each blog. However, I take no responsibility for its suitability or use as stated in the Apache License.
Helping You Figure Stuff Out
I get a kick out of writing blogs to help people understand programming and share points of view on technology and other topics. I hope you find the information on this site interesting and useful.
A Look Back in Computer History
This picture shows some movers pushing an IBM 5 Mb hard drive (yes, that’s right 5 megabytes) up a ramp in the really early days of computers. We’ve come a long haven’t we?
At any rate, many thanks for visiting my website. I hope you find my code projects useful.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Github for providing free website hosting with support for the Jekyll framework.
Special thanks to Michael Rose for creating the Minimal Mistakes theme, with which I built this website.
Another special thanks to the folks of the pandapower development team at the University of Kassel for the sidebar CSS that enables this site to put the article table of contents sections on the left side of the page in place of the author attribution.
Finally, thanks to Dryicons for my home page icons.
Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait…
The Earth began to cool,
The autotrophs began to drool,
Neanderthals developed tools,
We built a wall (we built the pyramids),
Math, science, history, unravelling the mysteries,
That all started with the big bang!– Barenaked Ladies