31 Days Safer: A Digital Hygiene Challenge for Cybersecurity Awareness Month
Everyone knows not to click the link — but nobody explains why. 31 Days Safer is a month-long digital hygiene challenge that gives you one small security habit a day, plus the threat behind each one. Free tracker included. Small steps for a safer digital life, from DataSec Chronicles.
Sep 284 min read
Week 1 Deep Dive: Locking Down Your Digital Identity
Week 1 of 31 Days Safer, one layer deeper. The daily tips gave you the moves; this post gives you the why — how credential stuffing, SIM-swapping, and social-media recon actually work, and why your accounts are a chain attackers pull at the weakest link. Non-technical, but technically accurate.
2 days ago6 min read
My Two October Builds: 31 Days Safer + an Open-Source Detection Skill
What I'm building this October: two anchor projects — the 31 Days Safer challenge and an open-source detection skill that maps alerts to MITRE ATT&CK — plus an "open workbench" where Hacktoberfest's weekly challenges are letting me explore what else I can build within the brand.
4 days ago4 min read
The Detection Mindset: Why This Isn't Your Average Hygiene Challenge
There are a hundred cybersecurity challenges this October, and most are the same checklist. This one's different: it teaches the reason behind every habit, not just the rule — the "does this belong here?" detection lens a SOC analyst uses on every alert, aimed at your own digital life.
5 days ago5 min read
My Hacktoberfest 2026 Plan: An Open-Source Detection Skill (Not a PR Count)
Hacktoberfest changed this year — no more counting pull requests, it's about building with open-source AI. So I'm writing an open-source skills.md that maps a security alert to the MITRE ATT&CK framework: the daily reasoning of a SOC analyst, packaged in public. Here's the plan, out loud so I finish it.
Sep 264 min read
Closing the Gap: How I'm Prepping for the SC-900 Retake
The comeback half of my SC-900 story. After failing by 32 points, I scored 90% on the Microsoft practice assessment four days later. Here's how I'm closing the gap: letting my score report target the right domain, drilling the formats that beat me, and knowing what each practice source can and can't tell me.
Sep 256 min read
SC-900 Debrief: The Honest Version
The honest version of my SC-900 exam experience: I scored 668/700, 32 points short. How the online-proctored setup compared to my CC exam, the true/false and drag-and-drop formats that caught me, what my score report revealed, and exactly how I'm approaching the retake.
Sep 215 min read
