7MS #718: Fun Professional and Personal AI Project Ideas

7MS #718: Fun Professional and Personal AI Project Ideas

From 7 Minute Security by Brian Johnson

April 17, 2026 · 28 min

About this episode

Brian Johnson shares various AI project ideas that enhance efficiency in IT and security tasks.

Hey friends! After last week's heavy episode about my wife's health scare in Punta Cana, today's is a lighter one. (Quick update: she's doing better – still recovering, but appetite's back and she's got some pep again. Thanks so much to everyone who sent kind messages.) Today I'm gushing about how AI has been making my IT and security life way more efficient: Firewall migration : Had AI walk me through a WatchGuard T15W → T25W migration (no clean config export path). AI captured everything – screenshots, branch office VPN, VLANs, firewall rules, DHCP reservations – all organized and replayed step-by-step. The whole project took ~1 hr 15 min (plus 30 min hunting down a subnet typo that was 100% my fault). GOAD lab automation : Worked with AI to build a script that handles the full lifecycle of my Light Pentest GOAD student lab – tear it down, rebuild from latest, assign Tommy Boy-themed passwords and sync user accounts to the Apache Guacamole and lab connections. Speaking of which – Light Pentest GOAD class will be re-offered soon once the calendar firms up! External pentest wrapper scripts : Finally automated the boring auxiliary testing stuff – nmap, Shodan API, Nessus queuing…

People in this episode

Host: Brian Johnson

Topics covered

  • AI projects
  • IT efficiency
  • security automation
  • firewall migration
  • pentesting
  • lab automation

Keywords

  • AI
  • firewall migration
  • automation
  • pentesting
  • SysReptor
  • WatchGuard
  • Apache Guacamole

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: WatchGuard, Apache Guacamole, M365

Products: SysReptor

Places: Punta Cana

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