It’s time for our October Member spotlight!
For this month's Member Spotlight, we chose to recognize @CptnCrnch. Over the past 4 months, he has has written 108 posts, received 83 kudos, and contributed 7 solutions. He was even the recipient of our first ever Rising Star badge last month!
Tell us a little bit about your background.
I’m involved in the IT security field for roundabout 25 years now, focusing on infrastructure / network security mostly. Guess most of it is based on my love to tear apart things and building them up again to understand its inner workings.
I’m with a large Cisco partner in Europe for over ten years now and really delighted to help our customers design, build and strengthen their (security) infrastructure. For the last years I’ve been concentrating exclusively on Cisco solutions and went from PIX to ASA, had my fair share of ACS and network access control projects with ISE, currently concentrating more on the “new”, interesting stuff that has come up like AMP, Umbrella, Tetration and Stealthwatch. All of these have given me the chance to broaden my views on security.
A few months ago I started with Meraki gear and came to love the simplicity of it. It’s great fun to learn something new, though its inherent simplicity makes it really easy to run.
How does the community help you in your day-to-day work?
Any particular Meraki product / feature that you’re particularly fond of or couldn’t live without?
Funnily enough: the API! When starting with Meraki gear, it was the first time it actually was fun to automate and even play around with Postman, Python etc. It was also the first time, a bunch of ideas for real-life use cases came to my mind even when I was scrolling through the docs. Never had that kind of epiphany with other products.
What’s your advice to folks looking to move to the next level in their Meraki / networking knowledge?
Although Meraki makes it really easy to run even big, distributed networks, understanding the basics behind it is always advisable. It not only helps with troubleshooting but also designing them further. The manuals delivered by Meraki are a great resource for that purpose. They’re short, concise and help getting you kick-started in a matter of minutes.
Apart from that: start using the API. It’s fun and will keep you “future-proof”. Apart from automating tedious tasks and making your life easier of course. 😊
Thanks, CaptnCrnch! Want to nominate one of your fellow community members for next month's spotlight? Submit your nomination here!
