Writing

Thinking out loud on security and architecture.

Posts on Zero Trust, cloud, AI, identity, and the systems that sit underneath all of it. Written from practice, not theory.

2026

Jun 1, 2026 12 min read

Entra Agent ID Across Clouds: Part 5, Anti-Patterns

Final article in the five-part series on running Microsoft Entra Agent ID against third-party clouds. Closes the loop with the variants and failure modes that consume the same operational budget as the federated pattern without delivering its security properties, and ends with the takeaways worth pinning to the team wiki.

Digital Identity Zero Trust Read
May 15, 2026 16 min read

Entra Agent ID Across Clouds: Part 4, FIC, Cross-Tenant, and OBO

Fourth article in the five-part series on running Microsoft Entra Agent ID against third-party clouds. Opens up the Federated Identity Credential as a first-class object: single-tenant, cross-tenant SaaS shape, and the orthogonal world of on-behalf-of (OBO) where the agent acts for a signed-in user.

Digital Identity Zero Trust Read
May 1, 2026 26 min read

Entra Agent ID Across Clouds: Part 3, Managed Identity and Entra Objects

Third article in the five-part series on running Microsoft Entra Agent ID against third-party clouds. Pins down what the UAMI actually is in this architecture, why SAMI breaks federation, the three distinct Entra objects (UAMI, Blueprint, Agent Identity) and the three claims (sub, azp, oid) they each populate, and the production trade-off between federating the UAMI or the Agent Identity to the cloud.

Digital Identity Zero Trust Read
Apr 25, 2026 26 min read

Entra Agent ID Across Clouds: Part 2, Federation End to End

Second article in the five-part series on running Microsoft Entra Agent ID against third-party clouds. Walks the federated pattern as two parallel federations sharing one managed-identity JWT, explains why a laptop cannot participate, and shows what actually travels on the wire (including the audience GUID that catches most first deploys).

Digital Identity Zero Trust Read
Apr 15, 2026 15 min read

Entra Agent ID Across Clouds: Part 1, Lower Environment and Secrets

The opening article in a five-part series on running Microsoft Entra Agent ID against third-party clouds (AWS, GCP). Covers the two trust environments behind every cloud-agent deployment, and walks the secret-based pattern (the shape you use on a laptop, on a CI runner, or in any non-Azure dev box) end to end.

Digital Identity Zero Trust Read
Apr 7, 2026 3 min read

Zero Trust for AI Agents at ATARC ZT4

Recap of my session at ATARC's Zero Trust Virtual Learning Exchange on extending Zero Trust principles to autonomous AI agents.

Speaking AI Read
Mar 22, 2026 7 min read

I Passed the CISSP in a Long Weekend. Here's the Honest Story

I've been taking certifications for over twenty years. Most of them blurred together. Study for weeks, memorize a bunch of stuff, dump it into an exam, forget half of it by dinner. You know the drill.

Digital Identity Read

2024

May 8, 2024 2 min read

Speaking at RSA Conference 2024: GM's Road to Modern Consumer Identity

Notes from co-presenting at RSAC 2024 on General Motors' multi-year consumer identity modernization, and what it takes to do CIAM at automotive scale.

Digital Identity Read

2020

Aug 10, 2020 1 min read

Podcast: Security Patterns For Client-Side Apps Running In The Browser

Great to have Dr. Philippe De Ryck on the podcast. He talked about various security challenges faced by developers while working with client-side applications.

Zero Trust Read

2019

May 12, 2019 1 min read

Podcast | R3's Corda platform

In this podcast, I talk to Austin from R3 talks about technical aspects of R3 Corda including its architecture, consensus, programming model, etc.

Blockchain / DLT Read

2018

Jul 13, 2018 6 min read

Part II – Kubernetes DevOps : Introduction to Helm

This is the second post in a multi-part blog series on Kubernetes DevOps using Azure. I am co-authoring this series with the help of my colleague at Microsoft, Daniel Selman.

Cloud Azure Read
Jul 12, 2018 5 min read

Part I - Kubernetes DevOps : Introduction to the Historic Events Microservice

This is the first post in a multi-part blog series on Kubernetes DevOps using Azure. I am co-authoring this series with the help of my colleague at Microsoft, Daniel Selman.

Cloud Azure Read
Feb 12, 2018 1 min read

Building and Running an Auditing Solution on Blockchain

On 21st February, I will be conducting an event at Microsoft NYC campus on building and running a fully functional blockchain based audit trail application.

Blockchain / DLT Read

2017

Nov 5, 2017 3 min read

Understanding R3 Corda and Running it on Azure

R3 Corda is a blockchain-inspired distributed ledger technology (DLT) from R3 that is specifically designed for financial and regulated transactions, and emphasizes privacy and security between participants.

Blockchain / DLT Read
Jul 25, 2017 4 min read

Homomorphic Encryption 101

I was recently exploring methods for improved privacy using various encryption schemes and stumbled upon Homomorphic Encryption that has a huge potential in that area.

Cryptography Read
Jul 22, 2017 2 min read

Creating Developer's Docker Linux Virtual Machine on Azure

For an upcoming developer event on Docker I had to create handful of Linux Ubuntu virtual machines on Azure with Docker and few additional software installed on it.

Cloud Azure Read
Jul 18, 2017 1 min read

Event Announcement "Blockchain 101 - Introduction for Developers"

Some of you may already be aware that I host NYC MS Cloud User Group technology meet up every month at Microsoft Manhattan campus.This month, I will be hosting/presenting alongside with my colleague C

Blockchain / DLT Read
Jul 10, 2017 4 min read

DevOps with Containers

Recently I did a video series for Microsoft Channel9 on DevOps with Containers (thanks to Lex Thomas and Chris Caldwell for recording these).

Cloud Azure Read
Jan 20, 2017 1 min read

First Look Into Blockchain

Since last year, I have been spending time with customers understanding how blockchain can help them improve/replace existing processess. Its relatively a new technology but evolving very fast.

Blockchain / DLT Read

2016

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2007

Jul 10, 2007 1 min read

My PDC 2007 Presentation Slides Download Links

Here are the much awaited links for my PDC Presentation Slides , as I conducted two sessions (one jointly with Vaqar Khamisani).Still there are no links from Microsoft so I decided that I should…

Archive Speaking Read
May 22, 2007 2 min read

MSServeSide Vista Launch Event In Islamabad

Venue: — COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT). Country:- Pakistan City:- Islamabad Address:- PLOT: 30, H8/1, ISLAMABAD Date : Saturday 26 May, 2007 Timings :- 4:00 PM till 6:00 PM…

Archive Speaking Read
May 8, 2007 1 min read

MSServerSide.NET Launch Event For VISTA , Office 2007 & .NET 3.0

I want to take this opportunity to thanks every one who attended MSServerSide.NET Launch Event (first one in the series of Launch events) held on Wednesday 2nd March at NED University, Karachi…

Archive Speaking Read

2005

Nov 6, 2005 1 min read

List Of All Of My Articles On CodeProject

Hi here is the list of all of my articles on http://www.codeproject.com .NET General Examining Organizational Workflows under the hood of .NETExamining organizational workflows under the hood of…

Archive Personal Read
Oct 25, 2005 1 min read

MCMS Restrict Posting only during 9am to 5pm

Check out the follwoing code sample , it shows how to allow posting in MCMS2002 only during 9am to 5pm this is a classic example of how bussiness rules can be applied. protected void…

Archive MCMS Read
Oct 24, 2005 2 min read

MCMS 2002 & WWF (Architecture Overview)

Well one thing that i love about CMS 2002 workflow (yes if you dont know that ,this may be surprising to you ) is that its simple ( 3 step at most ) , secondly we have all the Events with much…

Archive MCMS Read
Oct 8, 2005 1 min read

Artcile On WSS/SharePoint Server 2003 Architecture

Well i want to write on this topic for quite a while , the article not only explains the architecure but also examine the roles of IIS6.0 and ASP.NET. check it out at…

Archive SharePoint Read
Oct 4, 2005 1 min read

My First Blog Entry

This is my first blog entry …………………. Lets put it this way class Blog { try { //try to do blogging doBlogging(); } catch (System.Blog.Exception exp) { throw exp ; // hope fully…

Archive Personal Read