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Michael Goldblatt shared thisHi Friends - It’s been almost 8 full months since my last day of work and 10 months since I started my search. It is a tough job market out there, and I know there are folks who have been struggling longer than me. Between market conditions, fighting to get through the AI screeners, and the fact that in this remote work world you’re not just competing with candidates in your home area, it can be discouraging. That all said, if your company is looking for an experienced IT leader, or you are aware of an organization that is, I would deeply appreciate a recommendation. In particular, I’m looking for IT Manager, Senior Manager, or Director roles where I can drive IAM, device management, automations, vendor management, employee lifecycle, and IT budgeting. If you know anyone that would be a good person for me to network with, please connect me or tag them in the comments. Similarly, if any of you are in a similar boat and I can help in any way, don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d also love to connect with any other IT professionals out there and hear about your experiences. As much as my dog loves the extra attention she’s been getting all this time, I’m sure she’d really like to see me working so she can get back to reading. Don’t let her down!
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Michael Goldblatt shared thisMany IT teams view employee onboarding and offboarding as administrative checkboxes. But if you look closer, they are actually two of the biggest levers you have for company culture, operational efficiency, and data security. When these processes are broken, it costs time, money, and sleep. When they’re optimized, they become a competitive advantage. Here is how a great IT team approaches both sides of the coin: 🚀 Day 1: The Onboarding Experience A new hire's first day shouldn't be spent staring at a blank screen waiting for permissions. A great IT onboarding means a "Zero-Friction Day One." Device setup options: Pre-Provisioning: Hardware is on the desk (or at their house), fully configured, before they log in. Zero Touch: With a properly configured MDM, you can drop ship a laptop to a new hire and trust that when they turn it on and connect to wifi, they’ll automatically inherit apps, configurations, and security profiles, all while saving your IT team time. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): They automatically inherit the exact permissions, software licenses, and Slack channels their role requires. No more, no less. The Impression: When IT works seamlessly, the new hire feels supported, trusted, and ready to contribute immediately. 🔒 Day Last: The Offboarding Protocol Offboarding isn't just about collecting a laptop; it's a critical security event. Deprovisioning: The moment an employee departs, access to SaaS apps, VPNs, and corporate identity providers (IdPs) must be instantly revoked to prevent data sprawl or security gaps. Asset Recovery: Tracking and reclaiming company hardware efficiently keeps overhead low and ensures sensitive data remains within corporate boundaries. Data & License Reclamation: Automatically archiving mailboxes, transferring document ownership, and harvesting unused software licenses so you aren't paying for "ghost accounts." ⚙️ The Bridge: Automation If your IT team is manually creating accounts or chasing down laptops with spreadsheets, you are losing hours to easily automatable tasks. Leveraging tool integrations (like connecting your HRIS directly to your identity provider) ensures that an HR status change automatically triggers the correct IT workflow. The Takeaway: Onboarding is about building momentum. Offboarding is about protecting momentum. How does your organization handle the IT lifecycle? Are you fully automated, or still chasing down missing laptops? Let's talk in the comments. And if your org is looking for an IT leader that can help set up a clean onboarding and offboarding flow, I can help with that! #ITManagement #Startups #ITOps #SysAdmin #InformationSecurity #EmployeeExperience #Automation #TechLeadership
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Michael Goldblatt posted thisWhat you don’t know can hurt you - and your org. One of the trickier problems to tackle in IT is the prevalence of Shadow IT. Unauthorized apps present a number of different threats, ranging from fiscal waste to security breaches and data leakage. It starts, usually, with good intentions - an employee wants to use some new SaaS tool in the hopes it will help their productivity or ability to collaborate. Then they log into that new app with their work Google account and grant all access that the app requests. Then their trial period runs out. Now they’re submitting expense reports to pay for the app. And using the app to process confidential company data. None of which was vetted by IT, InfoSec, Legal, or Finance. And if something happens to make that employee unhappy and they rage quit or get fired, guess who DOESN’T have access to the data they stored in that unapproved SaaS app. Or if that unapproved vendor gets compromised by a bad actor, guess who has no recourse because they have no official relationship with that vendor. Add to that the slow financial leak of paying for apps that haven’t been reviewed and are possibly redundant to apps you already pay for. To make matters worse, the current cause célèbre, AI, introduces some new ways bad actors can leverage permissions granted to Shadow IT apps by employees who figured it was no big deal. Welcome to the party, Shadow AI. </sarcasm> An empowered IT team can aggressively tackle Shadow IT and its new partner in crime, Shadow AI. Establish mandatory vetting processes and review your app access controls and API access permissions and revoke everything that didn’t go through the proper process. Fellow IT folks - what are some of the most egregious bits of Shadow IT you’ve come across? #InformationTechnology #IT #ITManager #ITDirector #SeattleStartup #Startup #Jobs #IdentityAccessManagement #InfoSec #ShadowIT
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Michael Goldblatt posted thisI’ve seen it multiple times - an early-stage company has finally hit the “this-ain’t-sustainable” point and decided to make their first IT hire. Up to that point, they’ve had someone from Engineering overextending themselves to deal with the office network and Internet connection, someone from HR doing their best to manage Google Workspace accounts, and everyone in the company sending Slacks to the #General channel asking if anyone knows how to get them access to a random SaaS app or how to get ownership of documents formerly owned by a separated employee. Your engineers are expensive. Your HR team is already ridiculously busy and lacks the technical background to truly secure Workspace. Everyone just wants to get their work done. And while this seems like the point at which it’s finally worth the investment to hire someone to handle IT, realistically, it should have been done sooner. Does this person need to be one of the company’s first 10 hires? No - but it’d be a smart move to consult with a professional on how you get your initial infrastructure set up in a secure way, with advice on some baseline policies and procedures. Similarly, bringing in an IT hire earlier than you might have originally planned means you’ll have someone securing your apps, freeing up other staff time, optimizing onboarding and offboarding, reducing exposure to data loss, and, yeah, handling the odd password reset. This person will also help you make sure you are making smart investments in SaaS tool selection and quashing shadow IT that can cost you money and expose your company data. While the right time will be a little different for every company, and there’s no universal, magical headcount number (20? 50? 75? 110?) you need to reach before you realize ROI on an IT hire, put serious thought into bringing someone in earlier. Your bottom line (and overtaxed engineers and HR folks) will thank you. If you’re ready to make the move to bring in that IT leader, I’m available - let’s talk! #InformationTechnology #IT #ITManager #ITDirector #SeattleStartup #Startup #Jobs #IdentityAccessManagement #InfoSec
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Michael Goldblatt shared thisRaise your hand if you don’t know what your IT team does. A lot of folks, including leadership, don’t. Often the assumptions boil down to reducing IT to Helpdesk, which is a bit like saying your Finance team counts money - true, but only part of the picture. (And while I’m debunking assumptions about IT, we’re not all awkward, passive aggressive, arrogant people telling you to reboot your machine and then rolling our collective eyes at you, but that’s a different post.) IT serves your company and helps drive security, predictability, and success. A well run IT team will: - Handle your SaaS evaluations and subscriptions - Secure your endpoints and data - Manage Identity and Access Management (IAM) for all your internal tools - Handle device inventory and lifecycle - Integrate your tools with each other to maximize productivity and investments - Create automations to streamline functions across the org, like employee onboarding and offboarding - Facilitate POCs to evaluate tools - Collaborate with teams around the org to identify and execute on areas of opportunity for improving processes - …and so much more. When the team is functioning at a high level - anticipating and addressing issues before they become problems, quickly fixing problems that do come up, automating and optimizing processes - it’s easy to not notice the machinery behind the curtain. Though, we might still tell you to reboot your machine. Finally, this wouldn’t be a LinkedIn post if I didn’t make a pitch for myself. If your org is finally thinking of making the leap into starting an IT department, or if you’re a bit further down that road and are looking for a leader to help elevate your IT team, reach out to me - I can help. And let’s be honest. Your friend Michael needs a job - doggy daycare ain’t free. Dog tax below. #InformationTechnology #ITManager #ITDirector #SeattleStartup #Startup
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Michael Goldblatt posted thisHi friends - A month of unemployment down and I'm still on the hunt for a new role. If you are aware of IT leadership roles (Manager, Sr. Manager, Director) in your orgs, I'd be incredibly grateful if you could make a recommendation or introduction for me. Thanks. I know a lot of you are in the same boat, and if I can make an intro for you, please don't hesitate to reach out.
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Michael Goldblatt posted thisHi friends - Like many of my colleagues, I have been impacted by the recent layoffs at OfferUp. It's been a great 3 1/2 years, and I count myself privileged to have gotten to lead an incredible IT team here. While I'll continue to work until the end of December to help with transition tasks, I'm starting my job search now and hanging out the "Open To Work" shingle. I would deeply appreciate any leads, references, and referrals for IT leadership roles that any of you can offer. Thanks!
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Michael Goldblatt shared thisHey BI friends - looking for a new gig? Check it out - you'd get to work with Beth, which is reason enough to apply.Michael Goldblatt shared thisI’m #hiring a Business Intelligence Analyst!
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Michael Goldblatt reacted on thisMichael Goldblatt reacted on this*photo for attention & because I also ran a Ragnar relay this summer* Oh hi, LinkedIn! 13 months, 3 fractional contracts, & 200+ job applications later, here I am. Yup, it is rough out there. That being said, I have capacity opening up in October (or sooner for the right gig) - and I'm looking for what's next! This past year I've done some fractional marketing work that I'm very proud of, including: - Built an acquisition and nurture program for a high-ticket equipment manufacturer that garnered 3,500+ new contacts and roughly $200K in closed revenue traced back to a single campaign. - Stood up a complete lead generation system for a local home services business in under 90 days. Landing page, lead magnet, four-email nurture flow, paid social, and all the CRM automation underneath it. - Ran social and creator strategy for a specialty craft retailer. Content audits, Reels, and campaigns built around two makers with real audiences of their own. Before that I spent 10+ years at Glowforge as the first marketing hire, including a $27.9M crowdfunding campaign. I also coach at Orangetheory now, which has been a masterclass in brand all in itself. Remote is preferred - I'm across the water in Kitsap and can come to Seattle in person when it matters. Full-time, fractional, or contract. If you're building something and marketing is still an open question, I'd love to talk!
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Rakesh Raushan
This week I broke into a RAG system and an AI agent. Here is what I found. RAG is how most enterprise AI assistants work. The LLM connects to a company knowledge base, pulls relevant documents, and answers from there. Sounds clean. But there is a problem nobody talks about enough. 1/ RAG has zero access control by default I indexed a document containing an admin password into the knowledge base. Then I asked the AI assistant a simple question. It pulled the document, read the password, and returned it. No hacking. Just a query. If sensitive files end up in your RAG system, any user can get them out. 2/ One malicious document can poison the whole system I added a document with a hidden instruction inside. The model started following that instruction on every query, including ones that had nothing to do with the malicious file. The attacker does not need to touch the LLM. They just need to get one document indexed. 3/ AI agents do path traversal without questioning it I gave an agent a file reader tool. Then I asked it to read a file two directories up using ../. It did it without hesitation, leaked credentials from a completely separate application, and offered to use them. One input validation check fixed it completely. The pattern is always the same. The LLM does what it is told. If you do not add controls at the tool level, the document level, and the output level, someone will find the gap. I put together a free hands-on guide with full code, all four attacks, and the defenses. Next week: LLM reconnaissance and how to fingerprint AI systems like a pentester. #AISecurity #LLMSecurity #RedTeaming #CyberSecurity #RAG #AIAgents #PromptInjection #InfoSec
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Harry Hoffman
#California is starting off 2026 leading the way in consumer #privacy with #DROP (the Delete Request and Opt-out Platform). Created by the folks at the California Privacy Protection Agency this platform allows residents to get removed from over 500 registered data brokers. #OptOut #DataCollection #DeleteMe #ConsumerProtection https://lnkd.in/e-c5CAiy
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Fred Descloux
Today is Privacy Day. 🥳 Privacy isn’t about banners, checkboxes or boilerplate policies. Not anymore. It’s about how systems are designed, how data moves and who has power over it. The organizations that get this right don’t treat privacy as a legal afterthought. They embed it into: - Product and engineering decisions - Data architecture and governance - AI lifecycle and model usage - Vendor ecosystems - Security operations Privacy done well is quiet. 😶 Privacy done poorly becomes headline news. 💥 Grateful to work with teams who understand that privacy is not the department of “no” (poke Vincent, Morian, Fara, John, Jessica, Fahad, Karan, Sugun, Aashish). It’s the function that makes responsible innovation possible. 🫡 Happy Privacy Day! #PrivacyDay #PrivacyByDesign #DataGovernance #Security #AIGovernance #Trust
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Sergio Albea
🚧 🏃♀️ 🏃♂️ 𝗞𝗤𝗟 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸𝗲𝗻𝗱: "Detecting potential CA policy bypass by privileged accounts via private browser sessions" As mentioned and shared by Nathan McNulty, we should not use private browser sessions for cloud admin accounts. When two accounts from the same Entra tenant are signed into the same browser app, the device authentication (the PRT) belonging to the primary account is implicitly applied to the second account. That means the second account can inherit device-based Conditional Access, effectively bypassing intended device checks and weakening protection for privileged accounts. Based on this behavior, I created a KQL query that detects any account assigned a privileged role signing in with private/incognito browser sessions on a device where potentially another account is already signed in — a pattern that helps to detect the mentioned PRT/device-trust bypass. Even lower-privileged accounts are concerning when they browse in private mode so I am not filtering by just admin ones. However, to target specific roles, add: | 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨(𝘈𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘦𝘥𝘙𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘴) 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘴 "𝘢𝘥𝘮𝘪𝘯" KQL Query: DeviceProcessEvents |where isnotempty(AccountUpn) and FileName in~ ("chrome.exe","msedge.exe","firefox.exe") | extend Navigation_Mode= iif(ProcessCommandLine has_any("--incognito","--inprivate","-private","-private-window"),"🚨Private","Normal") | join kind=inner (IdentityInfo) on $left.AccountUpn == $right.AccountUpn | summarize Navigation_Mode=make_set(Navigation_Mode),make_set(AccountUpn),Distinct_Upn=dcount(AccountUpn),AssignedRoles=make_set(AssignedRoles),Potential_Case=dcount(Navigation_Mode) by DeviceName | where Potential_Case > 1 and Distinct_Upn > 1 and (tostring(AssignedRoles) != "[]") //| where tostring(AssignedRoles) contains "admin" #threatHunting #KQL #DefenderXDR #EntraID
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