About
I'm Don Cowan. I work in offensive security at IBM X-Force Red, testing container, cloud, and network environments. Outside work, I'm a massive homelab nerd, tinkering with everything from Active Directory to Kubernetes.
This blog is where those interests come together: security testing, infrastructure, and building tools. It's also where I try to turn what I've learned into something useful to someone else.
Background
My path into cybersecurity started near the end of my time as a combat engineer in the United States Marine Corps. After working with destructive entry (making holes in buildings), the idea of getting through a door with a lockpick or a bypass caught my attention. Physical penetration testing gave me a starting point for exploring security more broadly.
From there, I went to college and worked in security operations, systems administration, and eventually offensive security. Along the way, the infrastructure side became an interest of its own. My homelab gives me a place to build environments, try things out, and understand the systems I'm testing from the other side.
I studied cybersecurity at the University of Tulsa, where I'm now pursuing my master's. I also served as president of Root 66 Tulsa Cyber Clubs and competed in many cybersecurity competitions. That part of my story has a home on the community page.
Why I write
This blog is where I cement what I learn. Getting something working is one thing; explaining how and why it works makes me slow down and understand it better. Writing also gives me something to come back to when I need to revisit a project or remember how I solved a problem.
You'll find project write-ups, security testing notes, and infrastructure experiments here, with occasional monologues about my time in the military. The subjects vary, but they come from the things I'm working on and the questions I want to explore.
My hope is that a write-up saves you some troubleshooting, gives you an idea for your own lab, or helps a concept click. That's what makes sharing these notes worthwhile.
Take a look around
Browse the blog for the latest notes, or visit my projects to see what I've been building. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.