>touch home_lab

Posted on by Dan F

This post will be the first in a series where I discuss building a home lab to study offensive and defensive cybersecurity. Building a home lab has been the best decision I have made to help improve my technical skills. I have learned how to build and break Linux machines, become comfortable using the command line interface, and watched packets fly back and forth across my network.

When people begin researching a home lab, they may find sites like Reddit’s r/homelab. Some of the more impressive setups use enterprise servers and networking gear that could support a medium-sized office. A lab of that nature would undoubtedly be awesome to own and operate. However, all you need is a computer with some unused compute cycles as a beginner. For anyone reading this on a low-end laptop with no resources to get a better rig, there are a ton of free online resources as well. I will do another post on those resources soon. For now, check out the tools_resources page for some ideas.

The two primary types of home lab I will focus on are computer-based and networking-based. There are many other types of labs designed to support various other interests. Radio labs and hardware labs are common as well.

Computer labs support many objectives, such as testing new code or websites. They can be used as sandboxes to study malware. They can act as actual home servers to provide services such as email, media streaming, git repositories, data storage, or a myriad of other services. I currently run a few home services, but the primary focus of my home lab posts will be for offensive and defensive cybersecurity.

hello_world.blog

Posted on by Dan F

I put this site together to chronicle my cybersecurity studies and provide resources for others who are also studying cybersecurity. I do not currently work in cybersecurity. I am an Emergency Manager who has always loved computers. I am nearing retirement from this position and am looking toward a possible career change. To study in my spare time, I have built a home lab to learn new technologies to expand my technical skill. This blog will include smaller posts on some of the basics of cybersecurity, tests of various software, hardware, and techniques, and longer posts on some of my larger projects.

I am currently working on a long-form writing project, “Cybersecurity for Emergency Managers.” This project will provide an entry-level perspective on cybersecurity in the language of Emergency Managers. Emergency Management planning must consider the cybersecurity threats and potential impacts. Unfortunately, these threats can be challenging for those without technical training to understand. This project will align cybersecurity and emergency management planning frameworks with limited technical language. I will post some of this content here and use some content I post here in that project.

If you have suggestions for topics or recommendations for improvements, please reach out to me through email or social media.