Category: IT and Networking

For identity verification and privacy, I use a GPG key. The short signature is 0x44B6B4C7F1083AA7 and you can also look me up on the keyserver pools via my full name, “Andrew Reid East”, or my email, andrew@andreweast.net. I might suggest https://pgp.mit.edu/

I can accept email encrypted with my public key. I also sign my git commits for security and verification.

I was able to participate in the keysigning party at FOSDEM 2018 in Brussels. It was great experience meeting people coming together from all over. Expanding the global web of trust as well as the trust in my own key through personal connections is a great goal. Figuring out the inner workings of PGP & GPG was also a sound way to learn some of the principles of cryptography and modern Internet security.

To develop my Windows Server and Active Directory beyond what I have done in the workplace, I set up a home lab with multiple servers and clients. I used Hyper-V to expand my capabilities without needing more physical machines, and have gone through several iterations with different setups based on the end result desired, or to match an MCSA test objective I was focusing on. My current setup has two virtual domain controllers, serves DNS, runs networked backup jobs to a separate server, and is setup to use Microsoft System Center for configuration and endpoint security.

To expand my knowledge in networking administration, I tried several different open-source firewalls until settling on pfSense for my main router on my production network. Further, I delved into the Microsoft networking protocols, like DNS and DHCP, and how they work with other networking systems, like pfSense and dd-wrt, and coupled that with several iterations of Linux web servers running virtually and on a Raspberry Pi.

This physical topology diagram shows the layout of the hardware devices (left) and virtual devices (right) of my most recent home lab design: