https://some-natalie.dev/ Things I'm learning, working on, or thinking about. All opinions and snark my own. 2026-04-21T20:48:50-06:00 Natalie Somersall https://some-natalie.dev/ Jekyll © 2026 Natalie Somersall /assets/img/favicons/favicon.ico /assets/img/favicons/favicon-96x96.png 2026-04-20T00:00:00-06:00 2026-04-21T20:48:13-06:00 https://some-natalie.dev/blog/starting-ai-cyber/ Natalie Somersall

This talk was first presented at the Boulder Secure AI & DevOps group on 20 April 2026. The end goal is enough knowledge to (1) take some first steps on your own and (2) to see the path is worth exploring because there are tons of problems to solve still! You won’t leave an expert or have a deep dive into any particular problem. These are the slides with expanded writeup. This talk t...

2026-04-06T00:00:00-06:00 2026-04-06T00:00:00-06:00 https://some-natalie.dev/blog/chargeback-value/ Natalie Somersall

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of a successful proof-of-concept becoming a production system, but we’re not there yet. It turns out money makes for the hardest problems on the path to production. Let’s solve the problem we set out to solve, getting an understanding of software costs to recover them. We’ll find some unexpected value in the process too. How many ways can a vendor char...

2026-03-31T00:00:00-06:00 2026-03-31T00:00:00-06:00 https://some-natalie.dev/blog/chargeback-buildout/ Natalie Somersall

We left off with a laptop and a database serving as a bare-minimum proof of concept. It works, but not enough to be usable. Starting a project from scratch doesn’t have to be toil. Moving this into “real infrastructure” gave me an opportunity to implement quality of life improvements. Let’s do databases better this time By this point, the project had expanded beyond one person’s exploratio...

2026-01-25T00:00:00-07:00 2026-01-27T10:20:41-07:00 https://some-natalie.dev/blog/fipsd-it/ Natalie Somersall

Cryptography seems deceptively simple until you get into implementation. Tempted by shortcuts to save money, organizations ship something “just good enough” to pass compliance checks. I see this all the time working with the public sector and companies in highly-regulated industries making new products or trying to enter the market for the first time. Just when you think you’ve done everythi...

2026-01-04T00:00:00-07:00 2026-03-31T22:29:46-06:00 https://some-natalie.dev/blog/chargeback-basics/ Natalie Somersall

How do you know how much each business unit is using across any number of licensed software or consumably-billed SaaS or compute products? Let’s scope actually doing this having done it before. It sounds a lot easier when I started than it was when finished, yet it’s one of the most common stories I’m asked to tell. There’s some trauma here, but lots of lessons learned too. 😅 This is the...