Soon to be Empty-Nesters

My son came home and surprised us with an apartment lease agreement. It was a little emotional for me. Jaime and I always knew we would be someday, and we teased here and there, but now it’s real! My goodness. When I think about it, it’s actually not anything to be emotional about… He’s literally moving down the street, near his best friend, and he’ll still come by to do laundry. I had to capture some selfies for the moment.

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Day 25

I felt that daily updates were too little of information so here we are a week later. I’ve technically been at work for a month having started on August 10th.

This week was full of contract reviews while balancing NIST assessment and kicking off a FAIR assessment. There is a lot of discussion going on and much fact-finding.

There was some days I had to work extra hours and a day that I recouped that time. It was a good week. :)

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Day 20

Nobody was at work today… Almost. I was able to get a lot of thinking and strategy put down into my presentation. It’s all aligning! I’m excited about it.

I had a staff meeting today and that one is always good. I also had a good meeting with audit, just to chat.

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Day 19

Today there was focus on a Systems Security Plan that was completed a few years ago, but I found a way to cross reference it into my NIST 800-53 assessment through lookup tables. There is much copying but it should make life easier in the long run.

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Day 18

Today I actually had no meetings at all. I worked and did a lot of research.

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Day 17

I started this morning doing a lot of research on excel macros and using power BI. This was way early in the morning before work. But it carried on into my day keeping me motivated. I did more research and a lot of good work today. It felt good to get good work done. Sounds lame but honestly, it’s good to feel fulfilled while putting things down.

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Day 16

So… I did what I do and sometimes that means I did some work on the weekend and thought about things, probably a bit too much. But that’s good because it does go with my passionate about GRC thing.
Over the weekend, I went ahead and downloaded the SCF and went through some things that we do and found the authoritative sources that we should be compliant with. I got them all aligned and then harmonized controls and as lame as it sounds, I did some really awesome spreadsheet work this weekend. Come this morning, I plopped key points from it it into my PowerPoint. It’s looking good!

I did some operational work with my work twin, for lack of a better term for him. He gets things and I think he knows that I get things too. I just lack the tribal knowledge he carries.

I spent a lot of time updating and finishing all the questions for the NIST 800-53. I think I need to get some working sessions going on.

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Day 15, 3 Full Weeks

Today is three full weeks of being at Magellan and I am enjoying the work I am doing.
I finished a risk analysis worksheet today that leveraged many vlookups and hlookups… Actually, all hlookups because of the way the tables were formatted.

I found there is another Marine on my team, so that’s nice. I also had a little discussion regarding senior leadership and budget. Let’s hope we get funded. There are a lot of areas that will need focus and maturity.

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Day 14

More and more I focused on my presentation and the more I think about how things can be, the more I try to cram things in.
I did something with vlookups and hlookups and did some good both in my NIST bit and my risk analysis pages.

I am impressed with the advancement of my excel capabilities and how it’s helping get a lot of work done. Matching data and placing adjacent data in other fields based on lookup! Awesome!
I always knew it was possible, but some youtube video helped get me there.

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Day 13

I got access to our ticket queue and now I can help some people. How? I don’t know yet!
I am taking a big interest each time I open the NIST document… I’m seeing alignment and impact. Inherent Risk to FIPS. Tiers. Control applicability. Assessment alignment. SSPs. All aligned!

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