Alex Taylor

Internet enthusiast

Alex Taylor

Hi, I’m Alex. You’ll find information here about the work and research I’m doing, the writing I’ve done, plus various things I find interesting. Feel free to reach out any time.

For most of the last decade, I’ve worked in cybersecurity, with an emphasis on customer onboarding and deployment. I’m currently working in Product Management at a security scale-up, providing product support for the Deployment team and new customers. Outside of work, I’m usually reading about data privacy and internet accessibility.

I’m a fan of hard sci-fi, hiking, stand-up comedy, whiskey, point & click adventure games, coffee, roadtrips, and people who make me laugh out loud. I’m a strong advocate for doing things you’re afraid of.

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Latest stories

Okta Certified Professional

By alexntaylor
In certification
April 14, 2021
1 Min Read
O

Short and sweet recap here – passed the exam without too much trouble! I ran into a couple of questions about things I hadn’t seen before, but in general the questions were in line with the training and my hands-on practice. No issues with the online proctor or the testing software but I really hated the DOMC format – even though I felt confident in my answers, it can be daunting to not see any other options, and to have some questions show multiple options and others only show one.

For new folks, here’s my Okta Basics walkthrough as I took the training course.

Overall excellent journey! Really enjoyed learning about Okta and digging deeper into the IAM world.

Read on

Accessibility Resources

By alexntaylor
In accessibility, resource
April 10, 2021
3 Min Read
A

I’m the Chair of the Accessibility Subcommittee at work and have been overwhelmed (in a good way) with how much of an effort is being made across the organization to make our products and websites more accessible. Super proud to work where I work and super proud to chair a subcommittee of passionate people.

We’re in the process of putting together a handbook for new employees who may need special accommodations or just want to learn more about accessibility options. As part of that process, we’ve started collecting resources to share with the internal team. Wanted to share the list here as well.

Online Tools & Resources

General

Tech

Laws and Regulations

Training

Read on

OneTrust Certified Privacy Professional – Passed

By alexntaylor
In certification
April 7, 2021
1 Min Read
O

OneTrust is the industry standard for privacy and compliance management – I used this at my previous employer and am guaranteed to touch it again if I move back into compliance, so it seemed as good a time as any to level up my skills and get certified.

The live training is free and can be taken as two four hour sessions, or occasionally as one full day session – I opted for the full day option and signed up for one of the EMEA sessions (started at 4am EDT!). The training is 40% GDPR and regulation training and 60% training on using OneTrust, and I definitely learned a few things.

The exam is a 90 minute unproctored multiple choice exam with a similar mix – some regulation knowledge testing, some OneTrust-specific testing. Definitely a few tricky questions but overall I didn’t have any trouble.

Onward to the next.

Read on

Further progress in Dec/Jan

By alexntaylor
In certification
March 22, 2021
1 Min Read
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I spent some time in December and January digging into the learning paths on tryhackme.com and ended up really loving them. I’m currently about 75% done the Cyber Defense path and will be moving on to one of the pentest paths once I’m done here.

Plenty more to say about this that I’ll flesh out later, but I absolutely recommend the site to anyone in infosec, especially if you’re a beginner on the blue team side – I use some of these tools every single day at work and I still learned a ton.

Read on
Alex Taylor Internet enthusiast

Privacy advocate
Process developer
Product manager

Experience in information security, customer success, compliance and privacy, risk management, identity and access, and service deployment. Former teacher. Always learning.

We should hang out.