David Hill

Using ChatGPT on a BBC Master (via AWS and Telnet)

David Hill — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 19:56:56 +0000

For those that know me, they know I love my old retro Acorn Computers from the 80s and 90s. While sat on my sofa one night doom scrolling through Instagram I spotted some guy using a Commodore 64 and accessing ChatGPT (think old skool BBS style inputs). This got me thinking, how hard could this be to do with the BBC Master? Well it turns out its super simple… Where to start First off, you need a good old fashioned Econet network with a modern PiEconetBridge providing the gateway capabilities to the outside world (aka the internet). The PiEconetBridge is a Raspberry Pi-based bridge that connects classic Acorn Econet networks to modern TCP/IP networks. Details on the PiBridge can be found here: Chris Royal Github project and you can read all about what it does in this article: Hackster.io article Once you have all that, which most people who are still […]

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Check Point launches Cloud Firewall as a Service

David Hill — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 14:21:49 +0000

Exciting news today out of Check Point. Today Check Point has announced it is launching Check Point Cloud Firewall as a Service into private preview. This should come as no surprise to any of you, but I have been heavily involved in the launch of this offering across AWS and Azure and soon to be included is GCP. So what exactly is Cloud Firewall as a Service, and why would anyone be interested? Well, Cloud Firewall as a Service makes a lot of sense for organizations running workloads in public cloud platforms because it removes much of the operational friction that comes with the traditional, self-managed firewalls while improving security consistency. Instead of deploying, scaling, patching, and monitoring firewall infrastructure yourself, the firewall is delivered as a fully managed service that scales automatically with the environment. You can get centralized policy management, threat prevention, and deep traffic inspection without worrying […]

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Check Point launches Managed Rules for AWS Network Firewall

David Hill — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 17:23:22 +0000

Well, the time has come. It is finally here. Launch day has been and gone, and I now have time to write my own blog article on an initiative I have been leading at Check Point. Check Point Managed Rules for AWS Network Firewall I have spent the past few months working with Check Point R&D and AWS Engineers and GTM teams to build this launch and integration. I am excited to see it showcased at AWS Re:Invent which is coming straight after thanksgiving. What Are Check Point Managed Rules? Check Point Managed Rules are pre-built, continually updated rule groups designed specifically for AWS Network Firewall. Instead of manually building and maintaining large rule sets, customers can subscribe to these managed rule groups and instantly apply Check Point’s threat research to their AWS environments. This includes coverage across: Known and emerging threats Malware command-and-control detection High-risk outbound traffic patterns Suspicious […]

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ARM vs x86: The change in Cloud with AWS

David Hill — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 15:23:26 +0000

The cloud has always been about choice—choice of services, architectures, and cost models. Over the last few years, another choice has emerged that’s reshaping cloud economics and performance: moving from traditional x86 instances to AWS Graviton, Amazon’s ARM based processors designed specifically for the cloud. The Shift Away from x86 For decades, x86 architecture dominated enterprise workloads. Its ecosystem of software, tools, and developer familiarity made it the default choice. However, as workloads moved to the cloud, organizations started questioning whether “default” equals “best.” In a world where efficiency, scale, and sustainability matter more than ever, x86 often can’t deliver the optimal balance. AWS Graviton is purpose built for cloud workloads. Designed inhouse by AWS, Graviton chips take advantage of Arm architecture, which is inherently more power-efficient. But the value isn’t just about energy savings—it’s about total performance per dollar. Key Benefits Driving Migration: Performance Gains Graviton delivers up to […]

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AWS launches AI agents and tools marketplace category

David Hill — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 17:03:57 +0000

Amazon Web Services recently launched a dedicated AI Agents & Tools category in AWS Marketplace. This new category consolidates AI-driven agents into one central location, providing consumers a simpler, faster way to discover AI capabilities. Previously, enterprises had to search across multiple vendors and catalogs to find AI agents or supporting tools. The new Marketplace category puts everything in one place: Pre‑built AI agents for specific use cases (customer service, fraud detection, DevOps automation, etc.) Frameworks and guardrails for building your own agents Integrations with AWS services like Bedrock, SageMaker, and Security Lake AI agents and tools often touch sensitive data. The Marketplace category surfaces solutions that meet enterprise‑grade standards, with clear governance, guardrails, and security integrations. For example: Agents can be deployed for use with Model Context Protocol (MCP) Guardrails and observability tools help enterprises manage AI behavior, reduce bias, and minimize data leakage risks AWS launch blog provides some […]

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Using Check Point WAFaaS with WordPress

David Hill — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 19:13:34 +0000

Recently having joined Check Point as a Cloud Product Manager, I thought it was about time I started to eat my own Dog Food. For those who have followed me, or read my blog over the years, know I am a big believer in eating my own dog food. Not only is it a good way to learn the products you are working with, but it is a great way to understand the capabilities (and pain points) when you use it with your own services. So with that in mind, I decided to try out Check Point Web Application Firewall as a Service (WAFaaS) offering, and use it to provide better protection for my WordPress blog. So if your successfully reading this article, it clearly works 😀 Lets start by understand what the Check Point WAFaaS is, and why it is a good offering for my WordPress deployment. What Does […]

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Heading back to Vendor Land

David Hill — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 09:40:27 +0000

Well… after a bit of time away and a nice sabbatical from social media it is now time for my return. Where do I start? Post Covid has certainly been an interesting time in my life. Divorce, custody battles which I won, trying to keep my kids on track, and leaving Veeam after it all just became to much to deal with all at once, I decided to take some time off work completely. That is completely no work, not looking for work, and just focus on my kids. I decided to go back to the UK for a while and spend time with my family, with my kids. It was fun, I needed the break, and my kids benefited massively from having me fully present, without hearing the words, Daddy has a call, I will be free in an hour. Fast forward 12 months, and I decided to take […]

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Quick look at the new dashboard in Veeam Backup for AWS

David Hill — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 09:36:53 +0000

Recently Veeam released version 5 of Veeam Backup for AWS. In this new release a number of enhancements and capabilities can be found. For those that have not seen all the key new capabilities, a blog detailing all these announcements can be read here. Today I want to focus on is a completely redesigned dashboard. This new dashboard provides a lot of easy to see information about what is happening in the environment immediately, making it easy to understand what is happening, spot any errors, and just have a general easy to see oversight of everything you are protecting in the AWS cloud. First, lets take a look at the new dashboard: As you can see from the screenshot above, the dashboard provides a lot of key information to provide understanding to key areas of your data protection solution in AWS. Each area provides the capabilities to drill further into […]

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Using AWS tags to automate your backups with Veeam Backup for AWS

David Hill — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 08:14:00 +0000

Over the past few weeks and months, I have been having a lot of conversations with people about automation and the use of tags within AWS. Tags within AWS are nothing new, and AWS provides a vast amount of information on how to use them. First of all lets think of a use case for AWS tags. Backups are a good use case. You can easily apply an AWS tag to an EC2 instance so that you know whether this should be part of a backup policy or not. For example, you can create a simple tag called backup and have true or false as the value. AWS has a number of documents that are really helpful to understand what tags are and how they can be used. I have listed two of my favourites here: Tagging your EC2 resources AWS Tagging strategies With the recent release of Veeam Backup […]

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Technical look at Veeam Backup for AWS

David Hill — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 07:00:00 +0000

Recently Veeam announced Veeam Backup for AWS. This is a brand-new product bringing enterprise class backup protection to the AWS public cloud. I wrote an article on Veeam.com describing some of the details this product brings but wanted to dive in deeper through this blog. Veeam Backup for AWS brings enterprise class capabilities to Amazon AWS EC2 to protect instance-based workloads. With Veeam Backup for AWS you can store your Amazon AWS EC2 backups in Amazon S3 object storage and restore to any Amazon AWS EC2 region. Veeam Backup for AWS has several features and capabilities: Native backup and restore for Amazon EC2 instances In-place and Out-of-Place restores Granular File Level Restore Long term data retention with Amazon S3 Cloud Native Backup Automates Amazon EBS snapshots for frequent backup and fast restores Policy based protection Deployed from Amazon Marketplace to provide simple web-based management UI Cost Effective Built in cost […]

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