Westerhof

Adieu 2025. Bonjour, 2026!

As the Earth finishes another orbit around the Sun, cold January rears its head once more. And along with his two faces, a continuation of the Dutch traditions of ‘goede voornemens’ is required.

As I’ve said in my retrospective post, I wish I could’ve achieved more. But ‘it is how it is’ and the only way to go is forward. I’m no less excited for the next 12 months.

In this year’s edition we’ll cover certifications, blogging and most importantly: less!

More certifications

The biggest chunk of the year will have my focus on getting certifications. I’ve decided to fortify my resume by going into the depth with Offensive Security Exploit Developer (OSED) and across the breadth with ‘Certified Information Systems Security Professional’ (CISSP), This should follow the T model skills philosophy.

Into the depths

With now both eWPT and eCPPT under my belt, I feel more comfortable starting work on an advanced cert like OSED. I’ve already purchased it from Offensive Security using the ‘Learn One’ plan. Having peeked through the course content, it’s hard for me to describe how excited I am for this certification. Seeing it makes me nostaligic for a simpler, pre-covid time. Back to when I started my carreer, seeing my senior collegues start their iteration of the certification which was OSCE at the time. I was so jealous seeing them go through the material while I was ‘stuck’ doing pentests.

The OSED course syllabus has a heavy focus on low-level exploitation skills. Topics include Buffer Overflows, ASLR bypass, Egghunters and more. It is the part of CyberSecurity that always managed to grab my attention the most. Something that infected me when I did a minor writing 64-bit assembly in University. Truly, it’s still something I enjoy discussing when the opportunity arises. It’s exactly this enthousiasm that is driving me towards getting this instead of getting OSCP. While that program might be more worthwhile for getting a foot in the door HR systems, I want to prove that I am knowledgable in low level black magic.

All I can think about it is “Let’s fucking go!”

Across the breadth

My reason for wanting CISSP has not changed. Just like last year, I want it as a sign of “maturity” in my carreer, so that it opens up any paths that are not currently covered by my work experience. My personal enthusiasm for is only hampered by my worries regarding its ‘dry’ content and the ‘Information Risk’ side of the field.

Thankfully, I’ve been able to speak to old friends and collegues who have the certification, to hear their experience. While they reinforce my worries about the how dry it is to study from a book, they say that they’ve learned a lot and that it has helped them progress.

As such, the plan is to start CISSP after I have passed OSED’s exam, including a short recovery period. I will be eager to share the results of the exam with you during my 2026 retrospective post, because we will continue with:

Better Blogging

My aim for 2026 is to release 12 posts, with one release per month. My articles will have a balance of tech and non-tech subjects with categories such as ‘digital sovereignty’, ‘culture’ or ’tech’. Next to that, reading is one of my favorite hobbies and would love to share my book recommendations in it’s own section. Those won’t count towards the post total for the year.

The standard I’m setting for my content is that they’re a summary for myself of the work I have done, can contribute to the learning path of any readers and have sufficient depth into the subject at hand. No slop. I would be very happy if I could take a blogpost and make a presentation out of it for a knoweldge sharing session.

On a higher level, I want to update the Quality of Life of the blog. Some features, such as the discoverability of posts on the site is lacking - and I expect issues in the future.

As an example, currently, everything is on the front page ordered by release. A larger amount of blog posts would make it harder for my older posts to be seen. This would require pagination. Or what if you want to only see stuff from me from a specific category? Or what if you want to receive them by mail?

In 2026, I want to cover those features. I want to keep assuming I am writing into the Warp and am only read by ‘Chineese Cyberspace Daemons’, so assigning a ‘customer focused’ priority is difficult. Instead I’ll implement low hanging fruits that are easily implemented by the Hugo framework the site uses. Any outreach will stay limited to an RSS feed.

Less is more

And finally, my final goal this year to take on less projects behind the computer. Not only will the certifications eat up plenty of my time, my day job will have me stuck behind the screen for more than enough hours as well. Thus, my goal is to spend more time with those I hold dear and whose company I enjoy, without a computer screen now that I can still enjoy them to the fullest.

This all also ties in to a lifestyle where everything is on the internet. Keeping up with the news cycle, the private equity enabled rat race to the bottom. It’s disgusting. That’s not to say I don’t want to remain involved or politically active, I just want to keep it closer to home. To reprioritize.

Understandably, this sounds a bit abstract but it would feel wrong to make these non-IT goals concrete. Defining it in a way like ’lose weight down to 10% bodyfat’, ‘squat 150kg’ or ‘meet friends 25 times this year’ sounds incredibly psychotic, and goes against the spirit of this ‘goal’. Instead, I’ll describe it for myself as doing more yard work, more volunteering, more indoor climbing and pick up playing Warhammer 40K with friends both old and new.

As such, I’ll see if I can vibe this goal at the end of the year by the experiences I’ve had. And the best time to start getting this experience is right now.

Signing off ~

Changelog

• 2026/01/01 : Published
• 2025/12/30 : Final version
• 2025/12/11 : Initial version