The Year in Review for 2022

About-Updates  · 

In this post, I want to share with you a review of accomplishments for 2022 and a preview of what to expect in 2023.

This will include what took place professionally, personally, and within the community in 2022. In a follow-up post, I will close out the year with some things to come in 2023 in these same areas.

2022 Professional accomplishments

There were numerous happenings from the professional front this year. In November of 2021, I moved back into Product Management when I joined Cloudreach. Shortly after joining, we were purchased by the Global System Integrator (GSI), Atos. This sale was completed on 4 January 2022, and we immediately began preparing for the integration of the cloud practice and portfolio into the Atos OneCloud brand.

In early June 2022, Atos decided that it was going to plan to operate as two separate companies in 2023. These companies would be the Digital (including OneCloud) and Big Data and Security (BDS) businesses, and the Tech Foundations data center business.

Cloud Security is a primary area of focus within the new company and seen to be an area of continual growth in 2023. This provided me with the opportunity to move to the BDS team as the Global Principal Cloud Security Lead reporting the the Head of Cloud Security Strategy. This has been a dream move for me to be able to focus and talk about cloud and hybrid security on a daily basis. This is an amazing team with tremendous opportunity for growth for the next year.

As part of my role, I am an advocate for the cloud security practice. I have been a contributing author and editor for the Atos Digital Security Magazine, Sub-domain leader for the Cloud Security expert community, delivered public webinars and launch an Atos Cloud Security podcast, Head Securely in the Clouds. https://soundcloud.com/atos_se/sets/head-securely-in-the-clouds. The goal is to have this podcast on Spotify and Apple podcast in early 2023.

I am incredibly exited to continue to grow this role and the Cloud Security team within Atos in 2023.

2022 Personal achievements

My biggest personal accomplishment in 2022 is that I had two books published with Packt publishing. These were both study guides for Microsoft certifications. I also completed a third book that is available for pre-order and will start shipping on 6 January, 2023. You can find these books on Amazon: https://aka.ms/dwaynesbooks. I would like to thank Shannon Kuehn, Sonia Cuff, and Rod Trent for contributing to the forewords for these books and all of the technical reviewers.

I earned some new certifications in 2022, though not in the volume of the past few years. I became a charter earner of the Microsoft Certified Cybersecurity Architect Expert certification. In August, I passed the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam to earn my first AWS certification since 2018.

In October, I passed and earned the (ISC)2 Certified Cloud Security Professional. This exam was one that I took when it originally was released and narrowly missed the passing score. I took this exam after they released the new version of the exam, and I passed on my first try. The adjustments from the original exam created a much more pleasant exam taking experience. I now hold the CISSP and CCSP certifications from (ISC)2. I also became an Authorized (ISC)2 Instructor and look forward to teaching the Certified in Cybersecurity (CC), CISSP, and CCSP courses in 2023.

In December, I completed the ISC2 CISO Leadership Certificate Program to earn all five badges from this program. I also tested on the three ISC2 Cloud Security Certificate Program course assessments to earn those badges. These certificate programs provide great courseware at a reasonable price to sharpen your skills in cybersecurity for hybrid and cloud architectures. More information can be found at these links:

I also renewed my Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) and started my second two-year term as a MCT Regional Lead. I completed renewals for eight (8) of my twelve (13) Associate and Expert Microsoft Certifications. The four (4) Associate Security (SC-xxx) certifications were still on a two year cycle and the Cybersecurity Architect Expert was on its first year, so I will have all 13 to renew in 2023.

I was given the honor of being named an AWS Community Builder for Security and Identity. I was awarded the Microsoft MVP for Azure for the third consecutive year. Packt Publishing also asked me to be the Community Manager for the Security Pro Discord community.

2022 Community activities

Community activities through talks were less active this year due to a busy work schedule. I did do a series of blog posts as I began preparing for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam. This contributed to being awarded the AWS Community Builder honor. I also provided some blog posts and ebooks to the AWS Partner center blog and Atos, respectively.

The third annual Azure Back to School https://azurebacktoschool.github.io took place. This year, I added Derek Smith as a co-organizer. We had up to three contributions per day from over 60 community participants.

I also spoke at numerous community events and user groups throughout the year. This included two Table Talks at Microsoft Ignite 2022, the HexCon22 conference, India Cloud Security Conference, Azure Sweden User Group, Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance User Group, Microsoft Cloud Security User Group, Come Cloud with Us, Tech Talk with Kazeem, Sci-Fi DevCon, Midwest Global AI Developer Days, Gira Online LATAM 2022, Azure Spring Clean 2022 (third year contributing), Azure Live 2022, Global Azure 2022 (third year contributing), and contributed for the fourth year to the Azure Festive Tech Calendar to close out 2022.

Thank you to all of the great organizers and contributors within the #CloudFamily

Summary

As you can see, there was a lot that happened in 2022. More to come in 2023. Feel free to connect and follow me on social media.

Have a Happy and Safe Holiday season. See you in 2023!