Designing
Secure & Resilient
Networks
I'm Majid Ahmed — CCIE #55880, CISSP. I build and defend enterprise infrastructure across the Emirates: Palo Alto NGFW & Panorama, SD-WAN, BGP/MPLS, Zero Trust — and I'm learning to break what I build through TryHackMe.
Enterprise
Security
Networks
Ethical Hack
Learning to think like the attacker
TryHackMe: John the Ripper
A deep dive into password cracking with John the Ripper — hashes, wordlists, custom rules, zip/RAR files, and SSH keys.
->TryHackMe: DNS in Detail
Walkthrough of the DNS in Detail room — domain hierarchy, record types, and DNS resolution flow.
->TryHackMe: Hashing Basics
Walkthrough of the Hashing Basics room — hash functions, insecure password storage, hash recognition, cracking with hashcat, and integrity checking.
->Written from production, not the datasheet
Your Firewall Is Not Your Biggest Security Risk
After 12 years securing enterprise networks, the threats that concern me most have nothing to do with misconfigured rules or unpatched systems. They start with a person.
->Implementing Zero Trust on Palo Alto NGFW — A Practical Guide
Zero Trust gets thrown around a lot. Most implementations I see are just VLANs with a new name. Here's what it actually looks like to build it properly on Palo Alto.
->5 Red Flags in Enterprise Firewall Audits
After years of reviewing enterprise firewall estates across the UAE, these are the red flags I find almost every single time. If your network has any of these, fix them before someone else finds them for you.
->From Network Engineer to Pentester — Why I Started TryHackMe
I have a CCIE and a CISSP. I've been building and securing networks for over 10 years. So why did I go back to basics and start TryHackMe's Junior Pentester path? Here's the honest answer.
->Engineered endurance
Networks aren't the only thing I monitor. Every run, ride, and strength session gets logged and published as a privacy-safe dashboard built from Garmin and Strava data — 306 activities and 643.3 km of running in the last 12 months.
Longest effort: the RAK Half Marathon at 21.3 km. Uptime matters — for the infrastructure and for the engineer running it.
View the dashboard →A decade in UAE enterprise networking
10+ years designing and securing enterprise-grade infrastructure in the Emirates — eight of them at EITC (du), from service activation through the NOC to core network, and since 2023 as Senior Network & Security Engineer at Alpha Data.
Focus: BGP, MPLS, VRF, OSPF, SD-WAN · Palo Alto NGFW / Panorama · network automation (NETCONF/RESTCONF, YANG, Python) · Zero Trust architecture · and the TryHackMe Junior Pentester path, because knowing how to build a wall and knowing how someone climbs over it are different skills.