My name is Mark Rutten, I am a seasoned freelance Linux Systems Engineer and open-source enthusiast with 30 years of hands-on experience in managing and optimizing Linux environments on-prem as well as in AWS and GCP.
My expertise spans both Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Debian-based distributions, making me proficient in a wide range of Linux systems.
I have worked as a sysadmin, Oracle DBA, DevSecOps and Google Cloud Architect at multiple MSP's and as a freelancer in my own company for over a decade. The broad knowledge I have gathered in IT, led to the decision to pursue my passion professionally, which is finding creative solutions to complex problems.
I'm a huge proponent of open source software. Having worked with big-tech products for decades, I noticed a pattern of dependency without the required control to adjust for ever more rapidly changing infrastructure. This lack of digital sovereignty can have huge implications on the ability of a company to build and maintain a sustainable and resilient infrastructure.
A company or government entity should strive for digital sovereignty, which means the ability to control its own digital infrastructure, technologies, data, and online processes without an external dependency on foreign entities or large technology companies.
The best and most efficient way to achieve that is, in my humble opinion, to move away from big tech and towards open source solutions. Several EU governments have already begun this process by exhanging Microsoft software and services for open source solutions.
This movement gained momentum when the European Commission appointed Henna Virkkunen as the first executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy in 2024.
I'm currently expanding my knowledge through the penetration tester career path at HtB. This supplements my skillset with that of a potential attacker perspective.
If I can take away one thing from these newly gained perspectives, it's that the Unix philosophy is more important now than it has ever been, even though parts of the market seem to often be moving in a different, perhaps even opposite direction.
Throughout my career, I have demonstrated my ability to build and manage secure and efficient Linux-based systems, on-premise and in the cloud. Some of my notable accomplishments include:
I am well-versed in the use of Ansible to automate infrastructure provisioning and configuration management. This automation process not only improves efficiency but also reduces the risk of human error in complex environments.
My experience with Docker and Kubernetes enables me to containerize applications and manage them at scale, ensuring high availability and flexibility in deployment.
I have successfully set up CI/CD pipelines using Git, GitHub Actions and webhooks, streamlining the software development lifecycle and enabling rapid delivery of quality code.
I started my career as an Oracle Database administrator, a role I actively pursued for 12 years.
For me, it was also the stepping stone to Unix and Linux, the latter, which in turn, fueled my passion for open source.
To this day, I remain interested in databases, specifically open source databases like PostgreSQL and MariaDB.
My career has taken me from Database administrator to Unix / Linux administrator to DevSecOps.
This provided me with a broad skillset across many fields in the IT landscape.
This consequently pushed me towards Cyber Security, an area in which broad IT-knowledge is mandatory.
Pentesting / Red Teaming is the field in which is spend most of my time currently.
Following the Unix philosophy, my goto programming language is usally C, for its raw power and simplicity. When I need to build something with batteries included, I might turn to Python.
My passion for learning extends beyond my professional life.
I constantly seek opportunities for self-improvement through ongoing learning.
I am dedicated to staying at the forefront of technological advancements and sharing my knowledge with the appropriate communities, for the betterment of humanity if you will.
Beyond IT, my interests lie in the fields of consciousness, simulation theory, bio hacking and free energy (ZPE), to which I dedicate a major portion of my free time.