In the early 2000s, network security was simple. Devices were rare, expensive, and tethered to desks like loyal office pets. If you wanted to be on the network, you had to plug in. It was a time when IT ruled with an iron Ethernet cable, and security was built into the physical world.
The Rise of the Machines (and My First Steps into Security)
By the time I stepped into security about 20 years ago, things were already shifting. I had just started working in digital forensics when Neiman Marcus had their data breach in 2013. It was one of the first major breaches of the modern era, and it was a crash course in the realities of large-scale incident response. I learned more in those weeks than I could have in years of training about the impact of a breach, the value of good processes, and the importance of rebuilding stronger than before.
What hooked me wasn’t the chaos, it was the problem-solving. Security is a puzzle that’s never finished. Every day brings new risks, new tools, and new opportunities to improve.
WiFi and the Wireless Wild West
As technology evolved, so did the attack surface. Wireless arrived and felt like magic at first, until we realized it let people bypass the neat, physical choke points we had relied on. Flat networks meant that once someone got in, they could go anywhere. Rogue access points, weak passwords, and unsecured devices turned the office into a digital saloon. Security teams fought back with VLANs, NAC, and a dream.
Cloudy with a Chance of Chaos
Then came the cloud, fast, full of promise, and, depending on your perspective, a little terrifying. Securing it was a mystery at first. Security professionals didn’t understand it, didn’t trust it, and often tried to slow it down. But the organizations that ran with it, learning, adapting, and securing as they went, moved ahead. The rest fell behind. Cloud changed the game in another way. It gave anyone easy access to hardware, networks, databases, and storage. These used to be separate departments, each full of experts, but now anyone could spin up environments and work on projects far beyond their understanding.
And we saw the outcomes. One of the first cloud incidents I worked was a server that was left unpatched, exposed to the public internet, got compromised, and was quietly mining cryptocurrency. The team had no idea the server was vulnerable, and at the time we had no tools to warn them. In more recent years, I’ve seen the same pattern repeat, whether it was a development environment accidentally exposing an internal API to the public internet, or a misconfigured storage bucket leaking sensitive data.
These incidents weren’t the work of sophisticated attackers, but of everyday oversights magnified by the speed and scale of the cloud. The most common threats weren’t advanced nation-state attacks, they were misconfigurations and oversights:
Overly permissive security groups exposing critical workloads
Unsegmented networks allowing lateral movement across environments
Unmonitored traffic flows between regions, accounts, and clouds
Shadow infrastructure spun up without governance or guardrails
The cloud put powerful tools in more hands than ever before, but often in the hands of people who didn’t fully understand the risks or have the means to see where those risks were.
Why I am at Aviatrix
As a security professional who wants to make a real difference, I see that the industry is still massively struggling with securing the cloud. What drives me most is that the world is now cloud-based, our lives and businesses depend on it, and yet most organizations still can’t secure this vital asset. Without the right visibility, segmentation, and governance, even small missteps can explode into massive, business-impacting consequences.
That is exactly why Aviatrix caught my attention. My experience in the trenches of incident response and cloud challenges showed me the gaps that organizations still face, and Aviatrix directly addresses them.
Enter Aviatrix: Your Cloud Network Control Tower
Aviatrix brings security back to the center of your cloud strategy without slowing down innovation. Think of it as your cloud’s air traffic control, orchestrating safe, efficient, and secure operations across all your environments.
Here’s how Aviatrix Cloud Native Security Fabric (CNSF) solution helps you lock things down without locking users out:
Unified Visibility: See what’s happening across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud in one place. No more blind spots.
Security That Scales: Built-in encryption, segmentation, and policy enforcement designed for the cloud.
Multicloud Mastery: Normalize security controls across providers so your policies are consistent and your teams stay sane.
Operational Superpowers: Troubleshoot faster, respond smarter, and automate security workflows with powerful tools like the Secure Network Supervisor Agent.
Cost Control: Optimize traffic flows and avoid surprise egress charges because security shouldn’t come with sticker shock.
In short, Aviatrix gives you the tools to secure your cloud while letting your teams move fast and build freely. Cloud moves fast. Security should too. The key lesson I’ve learned is that real change comes from small, meaningful steps, building relationships, identifying the most important issues, and creating processes that drive continuous improvement.
Final Thought
I’ve had the privilege of building security teams at some great companies and working alongside incredible people. What keeps me in this field is knowing there’s always another problem to solve, another system to improve, and another risk to reduce.
Security isn’t about saying “no,” it’s about making “yes” safe.
Ready to bring order to your cloud? Take a free security assessment to find your cloud network’s blind spots. Your cloud deserves a little more control and a lot less chaos.
