It feels surreal to finally be launching my first post.
Half a decade ago, I built this blog, wrote an About page, picked a theme, and then… never launched anything. Life happened so fast. Career happened. DFIR happened — in ways I didn’t expect and honestly still haven’t fully processed. I just realized that as I am picking this little project back up.

Back then, I was working full time in IT in a different country & I was a Digital Forensics grad student collecting or creating sample data for fun, building homelabs that were definitely overkill (I even had a blade server I got from work that was decommissioned), doing CTFs, and trying to break into DFIR. I was truly enjoying that journey. I had the whole “I’m going to blog my journey!” energy.

And then the journey got very loud, very real, very fast.

Since that original unpublished draft, I somehow went from:
grad student → junior analyst → senior → principal → manager → COO.
Yes, that’s quite a plot twist. Nope, I absolutely didn’t plan it. Yup, I definitely still have imposter syndrome.

Even though the roles changed, the forensic-nerd wiring has stayed the same. I’m not doing hands-on IR every day anymore, but I carry DFIR with me everywhere — in how I think, lead, troubleshoot, communicate, and, honestly, how I make sense of the world.

> So why am I finally launching this now?

Because the idea creeped back after attending a women in tech conference in Guatemala.
I miss the DFIR community.
I miss learning in public.
And I miss having a space to think out loud without needing it to be polished or corporate or LinkedIn-approved.

For five years, Me vs DFIR sat in draft form — an idea I didn’t outgrow, just postponed. I was even paying for the domain all these years!
Now it feels like the right moment to bring it to life, even if the direction is different than what I imagined back then.

> What this blog is now

It’s not a strictly-technical DFIR blog anymore (though you’ll absolutely see some of that).
It’s not a leadership-only blog either.
It’s… me.

Expect a mix of:

• tech + leadership reflections
• DFIR nostalgia
• philosophy disguised as career talk
• half-baked ideas
• work observations with mild sarcasm
• random things I’m learning or questioning
• whatever sparks curiosity

Basically: the same “me vs dfir” energy, just with some patches & upgrades applied.

> If you’re reading this — hi.

Thanks for being here, in a website that took five years to launch.

Let’s see what comes next!

— Maggie