Welcome to Atomic Entra!

On shifting my focus and the fear of "Rebranding"

When I initially started this blog, I wasn’t always 100% sure what I wanted to talk about. I was younger in my career, going through a lot of change in my personal life with career shifts and moving my family across the country, and generally interested in everything under the sun when it came to the Microsoft cloud ecosystem. At the time I put a lot of focus on Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft XDR as those were the tools I was embedded in every day. I was a Solutions Engineer at a small MSP as well as one of our Security SMEs, supporting a highly regulated industry for a niche community (CMMC is a trigger word for me now). I was in a pivotal point of my career where I wanted to spend some time specializing, but wasn’t sure where I really wanted my focus to go.

Last year I shifted to a consultant role at a reputable firm and have spent some time re-exposing myself to all the possibilities in the Microsoft cloud ecosystem. With the latest changes in Identity Security and the mass exposure to Agentic AI solutions, Identity has become a topic I just can’t ignore. Zero trust adoption remains a critical pillar of adoption for any organization serious about transitioning to the cloud. Agents and workload identities continue to expand the attack surface of who (or what we need to protect). Architecting robust identity solutions will, in my opinion, be what fundamentally makes or breaks the security postures of all businesses as we enter into this new AI-driven landscape.

Enter, Atomic Entra

Atomic Entra is simply my way of saying that I want to share as much of what I know, and what I’m learning, in the Microsoft Identity ecosystem. With the fast evolution of Entra as the center of Microsoft’s identity universe, and the vast number of organizations reducing their reliance on the legacy architecture that is Active Directory, I have become increasingly fascinated and busy with the Identity problems of today. “Atomic” is, simply put, my way of saying that I want to keep it focused and try and make it simple for as many people as I can. Whether it’s a video on TikTok, a LinkedIn post, or this newsletter, I want to distill as much as I can into a format that allows anyone learning Entra or trying to improve their environment can take action on what I can share.

This doesn’t come without trepidation. I suffer from what I, kindly, refer to as “Shiny Object Syndrome.” For years I’ve hopped from cool thing to cool thing, never quite being able to answer the question of “What do I want to do when I grow up.” It wasn’t until I started giving myself the ability to focus my efforts on a single topic, and diving deeply into the weeds on certain problems, that I started to discover that answer. That commitment now, however, does give me pause as I also have to be able to admit that I didn’t have that drive and focus previously, and this could come off as “yet another pivot” or shiny object. I didn’t give myself the chance to dive deeply into any one thing. A large part of that, if I were to self-diagnose myself, was due to imposter syndrome and never quite believe that I had anything worth sharing. I aim to overcome this hurdle for myself, and finally give myself the space to share with whoever is willing to listen.

What’s Next?

I intend to, as I learn more and work to solve more Identity problems, share as much as I can with as wide of an audience as I can. Between my TikTok account, LinkedIn, and this newsletter, my goal is simple:

Share knowledge about Microsoft Entra and work to solve the big identity problems.

I hope you’ll join me, and find something useful along the way.

Thanks for being here, and I look forward to sharing more soon!