Tech Watch
What I read, what I retain
As a sysadmin apprentice, I read continuously — to anticipate client incidents, improve my homelab, and prepare for certifications. Here are my sources and the articles that genuinely changed something in my practice.
Updated 26 October 2026
01My picks — articles that made a difference
Reads that impacted my homelab setup or my day-to-day work at Concept Numérique.
pfSense — Manual migration from Promtail to Grafana Alloy across 10 Proxmox LXCs
The article that guided my log centralisation stack migration. Promtail officially reached EOL in March 2026 — I applied the migration across my 10 LXC containers and 2 Proxmox hypervisors. Alloy's River pipeline configuration is more verbose than Promtail but far more flexible when it comes to journald label handling.
Cisco ACL Best Practices — Named ACLs, stateful filtering and sequence numbering
Came across this at exactly the right time, during my ACL deployment phase on the Cisco 3560-CX. The section on native VLAN and 802.1Q double-tagging VLAN hopping led me to review my trunk configuration — I had left the native VLAN at its default value, which is a known security weakness.
Active Directory Tiering Model — Why the Tier 0/1/2 approach changes everything
Directly relevant to my Windows Server 2022 Core AD deployment. I didn't implement the full tier model in the homelab (too many VMs involved), but I applied the core principle of not exposing the DC on the SERVERS network — it stays in the MGMT VLAN with restricted access, exactly as recommended.
SNMP v3 vs v2c — Securing network equipment monitoring in production
I currently use SNMP v2c on my Cisco 3560-CX and pfSense with a non-trivial community string and source IP whitelisting. This article made the case clearly enough to convince me to migrate to SNMP v3 for encrypted polling — it's on my roadmap for next quarter.
02My sources — active RSS feeds
Latest articles from each source, fetched at deployment time.
Essential to anticipate active CVEs. I cross-reference CERT-FR alerts with my pfSense and Proxmox instances to assess impact on my homelab and client infrastructure at Concept Numérique.
- Vulnérabilité dans Mattermost Server (19 octobre 2026)19 Oct 2026
- Multiples vulnérabilités dans Stormshield Network Security (19 octobre 2026)19 Oct 2026
- Multiples vulnérabilités dans Roundcube Webmail (19 octobre 2026)19 Oct 2026
- Multiples vulnérabilités dans les produits F5 (19 octobre 2026)19 Oct 2026
My go-to practical reference. Guides on Windows Server, Active Directory, Proxmox and pfSense map directly to my apprenticeship work. I regularly come back for PowerShell syntax or Cisco config details.
- Quad9 quitte la France : le DNS 9.9.9.9 sera coupé le 24 novembre 202626 Oct 2026
- Popcorn Time : un processus oublié menaçait des millions de PC (CVE-2026-30612)26 Oct 2026
- Pulse : les journaux d’événements de Windows facilement lisibles, avec de l’IA locale24 Oct 2026
- PHP signale une nouvelle faille RCE (CVE-2026-115560) : appliquez le même réglage que PHP2Shell23 Oct 2026
Global cyber intel in English — major incidents, APT groups, ransomware campaigns. Useful for cross-referencing CERT-FR alerts and studying for Security+ under real-world conditions.
- Microsoft 365 Token-Replay Attacks Compromise 97 Accounts at 79 Organizations26 Oct 2026
- Gheist Uses Stolen GitHub Tokens to Steal Private Repository Secrets via Actions Logs26 Oct 2026
- Malicious File in Downloads Folder Tries to Trick AI Coding Agent Into Installing Malware26 Oct 2026
- Unpatched Tailscale SSH Flaws Could Let a Hacked Device Reach Root on Other Servers25 Oct 2026
The reference for server and network hardware. I track benchmarks for homelab buying decisions (ECC memory, HBAs, switches) and to understand what professionals run in production.
03Additional references
Forums, official docs and communities I consult regularly.