Security controls,
under pressure.

Selected systems from my home lab and engineering work, documented around trust boundaries, test evidence, and safe failure.

P-01
Validated

Fail-Closed File Intake

A staged malware-scanning pipeline that prevents downstream import until completion, scan, and move verification all pass.

Problem
Automated downloads land faster than anyone can manually inspect them — a single infected or corrupted file reaching a media library is worse than a slower pipeline.
Known limitation
Scan latency for very large files can leave content quarantined longer than expected under load; there's a bounded retry policy, not a latency guarantee.
ClamAVPythonDocker
View case study
P-02
Operational

VPN-Isolated Workloads

A shared-network-namespace design with controlled LAN access, verified tunnel egress, and kill-switch regression checks.

Problem
A VPN status badge in a dashboard doesn't prove application traffic is actually routed through the tunnel — a misconfigured route can leak straight to the ISP.
Known limitation
Kill-switch testing currently covers planned tunnel stops and host restarts; it hasn't been exercised against every possible VPN client crash mode.
GluetunNetworkingContainers
Read the guide
P-03
Operational

Private Service Gateway

An internal reverse proxy with split DNS, isolated management access, internal TLS, backup, and tested rollback.

Problem
Convenient internal hostnames for home-lab services shouldn't require exposing anything to the public internet.
Known limitation
Client classes that can't easily trust an internal CA — some smart TVs and appliances — still need a case-by-case exception rather than one unified certificate strategy.
NginxPKIDNS
Read the guide
P-04
Design

Kubernetes Parity Migration

A zero-change migration plan that preserves ports, paths, credentials, networking behavior, data, and recovery semantics.

Problem
Moving existing services onto Kubernetes is only safe if the migration preserves every port, path, credential, and recovery behavior — not just "roughly works."
Known limitation
Still in the design phase — no production traffic has been cut over yet, so real-world parity is unverified beyond the plan.
K3sArchitectureGitOps