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SecOptimized Site Update - February 2025

I wanted to provide some notes on updates to the website since I am quite happy with how it has developed over the past few months. Since I started this website I have come up with...

  • A unique name with an available domain
  • A logo
  • Completed the initial documentation for MDO and MDCA
  • Added comments to the site

A name

Hopefully the name and the inspiration for it is clear. Security operations are often referred to as SecOps, so SecOptimized is a play on SecOps + Optimized. The goal of my site is to truly optimize the way security tools are used. Too many incidents occur because of misconfiguration or just not knowing the capabilities available within the tool.

It was also a name I couldn't find used anywhere else that also had a domain name available for it! I spent too many hours thinking of names only to find out someone else had already thought of a Latin interpretation on security or a company named after a favorite beverage that often accompanied me on these late nights writing articles.

I am sure I will make some changes in the future but I am actually very happy with how my logo turned out after a bit of trial in error using Inkscape. I had done some graphic design in photoshop in the early 2000s, most recently most of my work has been done in paint!

For color wanted to provide clear delineation of the SecOp portion of the logo so you read SecOptimized but it is abundantly clear SecOp is the key word! I also chose blue, both for the accent of the site and the logo because most of this site is dedicated to "blue team" or defensive work. It will probably expand and enter into other colors at times but that was not the initial intent of this site.

Finally, the lock on top of the O. Probably a bit too obvious! Like I said I am happy with the logo for now, I put it together pretty quickly! I do need to explore other options and an Icon version in the future so you could see some changes here, but for now articles are more important!

Product documentation completion

As stated, I have mostly completed documentation for MDO and MDCA. The premises of my site is to have documentation laid out just like the Defender portal. So the navigation on the left should mostly mirror the name and ordering you see in the Defender portal. There are a few exceptions to this for things I felt were important. There are also some pages missing or not containing as much info as I would like because I felt they were a little to complex to tackle for a first pass. Don't worry they will be added in time!

While a lot of my documentation is covering the nuances of the settings I do plan to have something akin to guides in a different area in the future. They will likely start with new features released by Microsoft vs basic implementation guides.

Basic Sentinel guides are also nearly complete. It can be a very advanced tool so there will be a lot to revisit and add-on!

Comments

Finally, I added commenting via Giscus. I am not 100% sure if it works, it seemed to in testing but until I have real visitors (not just random bots!) and someone leaves a comment I won't be sure if they work! 😀

Summary

So far I am proud of how the site has turned out, I've spent too many personal hours working on articles and just tweaking little things, and I will probably regret the corniness of this page as if someone cares about name and design choices, or this purposeful run-on sentence... but this site is online and on a domain!

Most importantly though, I have learned some things along the way and not just from Defender products either!

If you have found this site to be useful in any way feel free to leave a comment or email me at info@secoptimized.com. (Don't worry there's no subscribe button! Though I may add an RSS feed in the future if I feel the blog merits one)