Howdy! I'm Jim Sykora. Although my website is branded around one of my favorite bits of Microsoft Active Directory (not SDProp), I'm a whole person who has interests, hobbies, and passions beyond my work and technology. No worries, I'll probably try to tag stuff appropriately so if you only came here for AD or Infosec stuff, that out to be easy enough to find.

If you're looking for my CV or work experience, my LinkedIn is over here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimsykora

My most used social media platform is currently BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/jimsycurity.adminsdholder.com and you can also find me on Mastodon and twitter - RIP.

I have a Github. I've made small contributions to a couple of open source projects, but I mostly use it to store things that are interesting to me. Github: https://github.com/JimSycurity

I'm from Minnesota, born and raised. It's hotdish, not a casserole. I currently live in rural Minnesota and really haven't lived outside of MN much. I've been very online since the mid 90's and I love to listen to and engage with folks from around the world and with different lived expereinces than me. Now that I'm married to a wonderful wife and we budget for travel, I get to meet some of those folks and experience new things for myself.

I've pretty much known I was going to be in IT or InfoSec since I was in elementaray school when I got my first taste of Applesoft BASIC and MECC's Oregon Trail. I've strayed from that path multiple times, but I've been at IT now in earnest for 25+ years, with my most recent focus being on defensive security, specifically protecting Active Directory and Entra ID.

In July 2025 I was honored to be accepted to the Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVP) program in the area of Identity & Access: https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-US/mvp/profile/01aa29ad-1527-452b-89a6-1dd2220fa77b

Content

Blog Posts

Talks

Long Form Papers

Video

Training

  • AD Security 101 - BSides Charm 2025: 8 hours of free Active Directory Security training