Bonjour, je m’appelle Jean-François aka J-F aka Jeff #
I’ve started my career at Cisco around Y2K, so many years later, I’m still around, hooked on the CLI, different times though, Claude Code has replaced the PIX or the IOS, but still the same curiosity to figure out how things work…
My career has been built around three things I genuinely love doing: solving technical problems, sharing what I’ve learned, and helping customers navigate complexity without losing their minds in the process. Not because it looks good on a review — because that’s where I feel the most useful.
What keeps me busy #
I’m currently a Technical Leader in Cisco’s Customer Experience organisation, based in Belgium. My work sits at the intersection of network security, identity architecture, and emerging cryptographic standards.
My three current obsessions:
Cisco ISE — I’ve supported the product since it replaced ACS, 15+ years ago. Even if there is always something new to learn, I could say I have a pretty good understanding of the beast. Cruising speed here, I’m only investing time to maintain my expertise and exchange knowledge with the local community I am managing.
Post-Quantum Cryptography — I started exploring PQC recently, the NIST standards were just finalised and general awareness, even if still pretty weak, started growing. I immediately understood the risk and started a crusade to make sure customers get ready for the future CRQC. The topic might still be relatively fresh in my mind, but crypto is an old friend! I’ve supported customers with technologies pre-dating the IPSec standards (CET if you absolutely want to know).
AI Defense — This one wasn’t planned. It emerged from my previous expertise in Firewall and IPS. Not to miss the train, I have started exploring agentic AI in all kind of situations…security being a second nature, it could only be natural to get hooked into what Cisco is producing in that area, even more when it’s being plugged into FTD! Still a noob here but planning to grow fast…
Why this blog? #
I’ve been writing internally at Cisco for years — blogs, SharePoint posts, community articles,… All of it lives behind a corporate login and, since Cisco employees are busy, the level of engagement is relatively low. By recycling part of this content here and exposing it to the outside, I expect to be useful to more people.
Personal branding is a topic I have mixed feelings about. We’ll get into that. I’m not planning to brag about myself here but instead to provide a snapshot of what I am doing. Hopefully someone will occasionally find the content useful. In any case, it will be more tangible than a plain LinkedIn profile.
Let’s not hide it, part of the motivation also comes from the fact I’m starting to belong to the dinosaur’s club and the target on my back keeps growing. I’ve survived many layoffs but who knows when my number will popup in one of the future restructuring lotteries. I assume it will be easier to find the next cosy nest if my “brand” is a little bit known in the outside.
In the same vein, I also submitted a session for the next BruCon. I don’t know the outcome yet, but, honestly, why would these people take a chance on someone with no public track record?
You’ll find two types of content here:
Soft Skills — career development, personal branding, learning strategies, and in general, “how do you actually sustain 25+ years in a technical role without burning out”.
Technical tracks — the deep dives. ISE architecture and operations. Post-quantum cryptography for practitioners. AI and AI Defense for security professionals who want signal, not hype.
A note on writing style #
I’m French-speaking. I write in English. I prefer direct over diplomatic, specific over comprehensive, and honest over polished. If something is a mess, I’ll write it’s a mess. If I don’t know something, I’ll say that too. I know I would be bad at politics, that’s also why I’ve studied engineering!
I’m not a guru. I’m someone who has been doing this long enough to have useful opinions and enough scars to know when to be humble.
If something I write is useful to you — great. If you disagree — even better, reach out.