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Cyber incidents love bad timing. They don’t wait for daylight or coffee. They strike when everyone’s offline and your alert inbox is blissfully quiet, right before it ruins your morning. That’s precisely how this one started. The 3:00 A.M. Surprise At dawn, the 24/7 SOC logged a new alert:“Possible Compromised Account (High Severity).” By 9:00…
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In IT, budget defense meetings sometimes feel like boss fights. On one side: IT folks armed with LAN/WAN diagrams, scare tactics, and a half-broken laptop that “still works fine.” On the other: Finance, armed with spreadsheets, pivot tables, and the ability to ask “Do we really need this?” with Jedi-like calm. Here’s the thing: Properly…
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The past month blurred into a cycle of offshore trips between the SWP platform and the Noble Viking drill ship, ending with a return to SWP once more. After three rotations in such quick succession, I started to feel like my bag never left half-packed mode. The Rhythm of Two Offshore Worlds Each site carried…
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Every rainy season, Metro Manila and the provinces transform into water parks nobody asked for. Streets become rivers, basements turn into aquariums, and you suddenly find out which of your neighbors secretly owns an inflatable boat. And yet, year after year, billions of pesos are poured into “flood control projects.” The catch? Many of these…
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Out here, several kilometers from shore, the ocean is endless, the horizon never changes, and the rig becomes your entire world. For weeks at a time, this steel island is home, not just to heavy machinery and oil and gas operations, but to the people who keep it all moving. And in this world, the…
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This Subic getaway wasn’t planned at all. It was one of those sudden, “Let’s just go!” long weekend decisions. Bags were thrown together in minutes, snacks piled into the car, and off we went. The only problem? A typhoon was passing through. Great timing, right? The drive down had me second-guessing. The sky was grim,…
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Picture this: you board a drill ship, hundreds of kilometers offshore, in a foreign country, with one mission – deliver a fully functional IT environment, complete with: wired and wireless network coverage for nine decks and multiple drill floor cabins/offices, servers, storage, power, security appliances, and communications equipment, before sailing to the Philippines and drilling…
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When I started in IT, cybersecurity wasn’t the hot topic it is today. It was a small part of the job – patch a server here, check the firewall there. I never imagined it would become my career’s main battlefield. Everything changed one day when our network faced its first major incident. I can still…
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I often thought that IT leadership feels a lot like being part of a college fraternity. You have to herd people who don’t want to be herded, organize projects that look impossible, and somehow keep the lights on when chaos erupts. My years in Alpha Phi Omega (APO) gave me more preparation for IT and…
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Why Asset Management Is Important In IT, asset management is often misunderstood. Many people believe it’s simply about maintaining a list of laptops and servers. In reality, it is the backbone of IT operations and cybersecurity. Without it, IT leaders are flying blind. You cannot protect what you cannot see. You also cannot plan for…