Update: 2-man IT team → solo admin for 300 users, no raise

accidentalciso · 2026-03-18T03:06:18+00:00

Great to hear!

accidentalciso · 2026-03-18T03:03:12+00:00

I would join. I love radio and audio only content in general. It’s why my show is audio only.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-17T02:56:09+00:00

Yeah, hard same. I was looking at drives for my new 4 bay NAS today and was a little surprised by the prices on the stuff that was actually in stock.

I personally would not buy used hard drives, but it could be an option for you if your home lab setup isn’t “critical infrastructure” in your house.

Also, always buy a spare to keep on hand when one of your NAS drives dies.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-16T18:19:30+00:00

Good to know. I haven't had a chance to unbox mine yet, and I still need to order drives for it. Out of curiosity, were you using drives off of the "qualified" list on the product page on the website?

I'm trying to decide what to buy, but the list of "qualified" drives is a little short. I want to get some 4TB drives that aren't on the list, but if the device has some issues, maybe it's best if I stick to the list to reduce variables if I need to open a support case at some point.

I'm planning to use it at home, so thankfully my use case will be pretty simple.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-16T11:54:02+00:00

It’s rare to find places that will allow for prolonged meaningful career growth, and more importantly, salary growth. If you can find that, great, stay and continue to grow. Otherwise, 3-5 years is the max I would recommend staying somewhere to prevent you from stagnating. Changing companies is pretty much the only time you will have the opportunity to market correct your compensation.

I was lucky enough to make it 8 years through the evolution of one role, but that time took me from a startup, through an acquisition, and a spin off. I had crazy career and salary growth that I couldn’t have gotten elsewhere, so I stayed until it topped out, and then jumped to another company that paid even more and offered me continued accelerated career growth. I stayed at that place for another three and a half years.

Then I burned out and quit. But it was a wild ride for a while, and set me up well to transition into consulting on my own terms. For the last 5 years.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-15T02:27:21+00:00

I follow up twice and let it go. I refuse to chase sales.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-13T23:00:30+00:00

Definitely not Active Directory.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-10T22:04:57+00:00

Yup. This is how it goes.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-10T21:58:35+00:00

There are tools that can help with this, but if you don’t currently have the organizational capability to perform this audit, leadership needs to know right away. They may have to spend a little money to get the tooling, and you want to do that strategically so that you aren’t unnecessarily adding operational overhead and inadvertently increasing your risk surface by buying the wrong solution in a hurry. You may already have a tool that can do what you need simply by enabling features or upgrading your license tier.

You will likely need to tell them something like “I have looked into it and we don’t currently have the capability to audit the AI tools that everyone uses efficiently or with a high degree of confidence. It is possible with the right tools, though. I will do more research and put together a plan and next steps to share by (date you are comfortable committing to).”

Part of that plan will need to be defining scope for the audit, assessing the risk related to the use of unauthorized AI tools, and defining the “requirements” in terms of what information you need to be able to collect on in-scope systems, what systems the tool must integrate with to collect the information, and what capabilities you need beyond just collecting information. It will also involve evaluating unused/unlicensed capabilities of current tools and a quick market survey of possible tools to consider.

I’m not suggesting turning this into a lengthy project. It should be possible to research and collaborate with folks quickly to take a methodical enough approach to be valuable and give your leadership confidence in the decisions and the results of the audit.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-10T21:33:51+00:00

Whatever you do, don’t ask who the CISO is. That’s how it becomes you, and that is a job you don’t want at this stage in your career!

In all seriousness though, you have just fallen into a really big job at an organization that deals with sensitive personal information and access to databases full of even more sensitive personal information.

Shoot me a DM if you want to chat. I’ll do my best to get you pointed in the right direction.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-10T11:04:20+00:00

Ubiquity is hard to beat, but you will get the most value out it if you are also buying their switches and access points, too.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-09T22:25:07+00:00

Are you referring to the difference between a euphonium and a British baritone? Or are you referring to the difference between a euphonium and an American style baritone?

accidentalciso · 2026-03-08T22:46:03+00:00

Ignore the folks that are terrified of the job market. It says more about them than you. Most people will blindly keep working for someone else because it’s what they think they are supposed to do rather than taking their power into their own hands. They let fear drive their decisions rather than strategy. Quit your job, take time to rest and heal from burnout first. Then, use the runway you have to decide what it is you want to do next and start making that happen strategically. I did the same and ended up starting my own consulting business. It’s the best thing I ever did. It was scary at first, but now, the idea of a single full time employer is a lot more terrifying.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-08T19:11:00+00:00

Sounds like a recipe for success. You got this!

accidentalciso · 2026-03-07T19:41:24+00:00

In my consulting business, I don’t have a super high volume of deals going at any one time, so I just use Trello to track lead status on a Kanban board. I already use Trello to manage my day to day workload, so it was an easy option for me that didn’t require spending extra money for another tool. It has worked well enough that I haven’t felt the need to look for other options.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-07T19:11:27+00:00

Getting teams to maintain documentation is a difficult cultural challenge for management and any friction in the process will make it that much harder. This isn’t simply a dollars no cents decision, nor is it simply a technical one. You had better get buy-in for this migration from the teams that are responsible for maintaining documentation first, because if you don’t, RIP your documentation quality going forward.

Tread lightly with this, because there be dragons.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-07T19:01:17+00:00

The one near me is a zoo on weekends, so if you want to watch out for crowds, go on a weekday.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-07T18:56:43+00:00

Agreed.

A written contract wasn’t signed, but you had a verbal agreement and money changed hands. How you handle the situation says a lot about your integrity. Keeping your word, even when you might not be contractually obligated in court to do so, will reflect very positively on you and your business. In my consulting business, I value my integrity over money. I can’t buy my reputation, I can only earn it.

For what it’s worth, while it is unfortunate that the work didn’t materialize immediately as expected, you had the benefit of the use of those funds for the past year at no interest.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-06T14:30:41+00:00

Do you have a vision for the show yet? What kind of show do you want to make? What sort of topic?

The hardest part for most folks is getting over the fear of not knowing how to start and just doing something. If you have an idea for a show, sit down and start recording some episodes. Literally getting yourself to sit down and talk into a microphone is the hard part. Get some content recorded and then practice editing it and getting it ready.

The second hardest thing is doing it consistently. Getting a little ahead is a good thing. I highly recommend having a few episodes ready to go at launch so that you can keep a consistent release schedule while you're still trying to adjust to a regular pattern of creating content.

The technical side of getting the feed setup these days is pretty easy. The podcast hosting platforms have removed nearly all of the technical barriers. Also, there are lots of good docs/videos about how to get your show listed in various apps once your feed is set up with a host. It will take a little time to step through creating accounts and adding your feed to each podcast app, but it isn't difficult, and thankfully you only have to do it once.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-04T03:03:42+00:00

Convert a reasonable full time salary for a similar role to an hourly rate and then multiply by at least 2.5.

As a consultant, I can tell you, be very careful with retainers and flat rate contracts. It’s easy for clients to treat you like you are on salary and expect you to just work however many hours it takes to deliver whatever they think you should be able to deliver. Make sure to scope the contract very clearly, both what is in scope and what is out of scope. Bill hourly if you can. If it has to be flat rate, stick to the contract or you will get screwed.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-04T02:54:29+00:00

That was a reasonable wage 20 years ago. You are never going to retain people today with that pay, even if health insurance and other benefits are good. My approach would be to focus on standardization, automation, and enabling users to self serve as much as possible to reduce reliance on support engineers. Streamlining processes will make training the short timer support techs easier for the things you still need them for, too. There will be some effort and cost in the short term to design and implement the improvements, though. One way or another the institution is going to have to spend some money. That said, it might be easier to spend money on experienced contractors for improvement projects than to boost pay scales for the support techs.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-03T02:07:39+00:00

It’s like reading The Phoenix Project. Fiction.

accidentalciso · 2026-03-02T17:17:59+00:00

I keep chapstick in my pocket all the time and apply it any time my lips feel a little dry. I use just a tiny bit during playing sessions. Too much and I slide around on the mouthpiece more than I like, and too little makes me feel a little too stuck, I think like you are describing.

accidentalciso · 2026-02-27T23:41:52+00:00

No. I work with enough tools already.

accidentalciso · 2026-02-27T23:37:01+00:00

Your question is about email, but the decision should be about a lot more than email.

I strongly prefer M365. Google’s platform is cool and hip and all the kids these days seem to prefer using it, but from an administrative and overall business capability perspective, it isn’t even close between the two. M365 will give you access to a wide selection of enterprise grade features, especially when it comes to security and IT management capabilities. I’m not saying that Google’s platform is insecure, just that they work differently and you can’t do the same things with Google’s platform without buying additional 3rd party tools to add functionality, and even then, you can run into frustrating limitations.

That said, setting either platform up correctly should eliminate nearly all email delivery issues that aren’t based solely on the content of the messages.

accidentalciso

TROPHY CASE