What’s your personal approach to keeping up with technology? Do you stay up to date by reading news or do you find time to practice with new tech as it enters the market?

I read multiple blogs such as Brian Krebs on a daily basis, sometimes security researchers provide solid threat intelligence as well as offsetting some marketing claims. I track emerging technology trends via Indeed job postings, companies hiring for roles is my gauge of the adoption of new technology.  

I also try to carve out time to get hands on with technology that will either help or harm organizations in my sphere. Reading about technology is good, but for example working with a virtual Kali server allows me to tie together the theoretical and practical aspects of a risk more rapidly.

Plus, technology is fun, few people enjoy meetings but occasionally working with tech tools keeps me engaged on multiple levels.

I tend to allocate time to reading news, attending webinars such as those by Gartner, attending industry forums (avoiding the vendor stands!!), playing around with tools/toys from time to time and so on. I also have a tech group stood up to identify any user impacting technology changes coming, either from the vendor or by my tech teams, and recommend an approach such as education, communications, webinars, or stopping the change.

Mixture of news, thought leaders newsletters, podcasts, news reels, and community groups.

I do both. I try to set time aside every week specifically for upskilling. I subscribe to Learning Platforms and I read articles from industry sources (Towards Data Science, Medium, KDNuggets, etc.). I can do hands-on practice and upskilling via platforms like O'Reilly, Coursera, Udemy. Some weeks I'm more productive than others, but I try to keep moving forward and staying current. 

Reading, understanding, team discussions, trying it and using it, In that order