https://blog.anlabs.net/ Hands-on articles on LLM engineering, AI security, zero trust, PKI and certificates, and command-line recipes for security and infrastructure engineers. en Tue, 22 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/harness-engineering-around-the-brain/ https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/harness-engineering-around-the-brain/ Tue, 22 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anil K ai The loop makes an LLM behave like an agent, but the harness is what makes it survivable in production — tool registry, context manager, state store, guardrails, and evaluators around the model. https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/loop-engineering-brain-behind-the-agent/ https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/loop-engineering-brain-behind-the-agent/ Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anil K ai An LLM is a stateless next-token predictor. The 'brain' of an AI agent isn't the model — it's the loop you build around it. What actually happens in one iteration, and where the loop breaks in production. https://blog.anlabs.net/others/first-step-towards-cissp-certification/ https://blog.anlabs.net/others/first-step-towards-cissp-certification/ Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anil K others A field guide to starting your CISSP journey — prerequisites, domains, the study materials that actually helped, and the exam-day strategy I wish someone had handed me on day one. https://blog.anlabs.net/pki/passkeys-the-future-of-web-authentication/ https://blog.anlabs.net/pki/passkeys-the-future-of-web-authentication/ Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anil K pki Passkeys replace passwords with asymmetric cryptography bound to your device and unlocked by a biometric. How they actually work, why they're better, and where they still fall short. https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/fine-tuning-vs-rag/ https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/fine-tuning-vs-rag/ Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anil K ai Fine-tuning bakes knowledge into the model's weights; RAG lets it look things up. A clear-eyed comparison across cost, latency, freshness, and accuracy — plus when to use both. https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/llm-context-windows-and-memory/ https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/llm-context-windows-and-memory/ Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anil K ai Why LLMs forget, how much they can actually remember, and the four techniques — bigger windows, RAG, persistent memory, and efficient attention — that push past the limit. https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/llm-vocab-tokens-embeddings/ https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/llm-vocab-tokens-embeddings/ Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anil K ai The core plumbing behind every large language model — tokens, tokenisation, embeddings, vocabulary, and context windows — explained in plain English with examples you can actually try. https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/why-quantized-small-models-will-dominate-ai/ https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/why-quantized-small-models-will-dominate-ai/ Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anil K ai The shift from giant generalists to tiny specialists. Why INT8/INT4 quantized small language models — not ever-larger frontier LLMs — are where most real business value will actually be captured. https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/fine-tune-llms-on-your-laptop/ https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/fine-tune-llms-on-your-laptop/ Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anil K ai Fine-tune an open-source LLM on a MacBook in under ten minutes. A working LoRA + Phi-2 pipeline on Apple Silicon, trained on the GDPR, with no cloud bill attached. https://blog.anlabs.net/cybersecurity/zero-trust-architecture-guide/ https://blog.anlabs.net/cybersecurity/zero-trust-architecture-guide/ Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anil K cybersecurity Zero Trust has become enterprise security's most abused term. Strip out the vendor marketing and what's left is a coherent, measurable, implementable model. Here's how to build it without the buzzword bingo. https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/hidden-risks-of-llm-apis/ https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/hidden-risks-of-llm-apis/ Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anil K ai Shipping an LLM behind a REST endpoint feels routine — until you realise the model itself is an attack surface. Prompt injection, exfiltration through retrieval, and timing side-channels, with fixes that actually hold up. https://blog.anlabs.net/pki/certificate-lifecycle-management/ https://blog.anlabs.net/pki/certificate-lifecycle-management/ Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anil K pki Expired certs cause outages. Mis-issued ones cause breaches. A disciplined lifecycle process kills both failure modes — here's how to build one that actually survives contact with production. https://blog.anlabs.net/commands/top-10-netcat-commands/ https://blog.anlabs.net/commands/top-10-netcat-commands/ Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anil K commands Ten practical netcat (nc) patterns for troubleshooting, testing, and automation — with parameters, examples, and the use cases that actually come up in the field. https://blog.anlabs.net/commands/10-powerful-curl-commands/ https://blog.anlabs.net/commands/10-powerful-curl-commands/ Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anil K commands Practical cURL debugging patterns for APIs, TLS, DNS, redirects, and payload inspection — commands, what they reveal, and when to reach for them. https://blog.anlabs.net/commands/azure-ad-connect-powershell-commands/ https://blog.anlabs.net/commands/azure-ad-connect-powershell-commands/ Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anil K commands A practical admin's field guide to Azure AD Connect (now part of Microsoft Entra ID) — what it does, which PowerShell modules ship with it, and the ten commands you'll actually run day-to-day. https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/building-rag-systems-in-production/ https://blog.anlabs.net/ai/building-rag-systems-in-production/ Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anil K ai A ten-document RAG demo is an afternoon project. A half-million-document RAG system with real users is an engineering discipline. Here's what actually breaks, and the architecture that holds up. https://blog.anlabs.net/cybersecurity/anatomy-of-a-ransomware-attack/ https://blog.anlabs.net/cybersecurity/anatomy-of-a-ransomware-attack/ Wed, 14 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT Anil K cybersecurity Ransomware isn't a hacker in a hoodie anymore — it's a specialised industry with a supply chain, affiliates, and KPIs. Walking the full kill chain, with the detections that actually fire before the encryption does. https://blog.anlabs.net/pki/understanding-lets-encrypt/ https://blog.anlabs.net/pki/understanding-lets-encrypt/ Sat, 20 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT Anil K pki Let's Encrypt has issued over three billion certificates and quietly rewired the trust model of the public web. The ACME protocol, Certificate Transparency, the chain of trust — how it actually works, and how to run it at scale. https://blog.anlabs.net/commands/nmap-tutorial-for-beginners/ https://blog.anlabs.net/commands/nmap-tutorial-for-beginners/ Mon, 24 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT Anil K commands Nmap is the standard open-source network scanner for discovering hosts, ports, services, and basic weaknesses. A beginner-friendly tour of what it does, how to use it, and the ten options you'll reach for again and again. https://blog.anlabs.net/commands/powershell-network-troubleshooting/ https://blog.anlabs.net/commands/powershell-network-troubleshooting/ Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT Anil K commands Ten PowerShell cmdlets every Windows admin should keep close for diagnosing network hiccups — ping, ports, routes, firewall, packet capture, and more. https://blog.anlabs.net/commands/top-10-linux-file-commands/ https://blog.anlabs.net/commands/top-10-linux-file-commands/ Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT Anil K commands The ten Linux file and folder commands every sysadmin and power user should have in muscle memory — options, examples, and expected output.