Think deeply, drift, dream, and breathe, then write.

Writing

Upcoming Works

Technical books taught me discipline, precision, and how to hold a reader across four hundred pages. Fiction uses everything I collected along the way. The poet's ear. The architect's instinct for structure. The artist who gets “dirt to hold hands.” The habit of questioning assumptions.

Fiction Series

To Be Published Works

I wrote poetry before I wrote anything else. Growing up in the mountains of West Virginia, words were my first studio. I noticed things: early morning light on a mountain side, with the advection fog rising up the ridge line. Poetry taught me to pay attention and to find the precise word for something you cannot quite name. That instinct never left. Many years later, it showed up in unexpected places. Enjoy “A Pause.”

Poetry and Prose

A Pause

Little maple seeds, flying leaves, blue skies;
Distant bells ringing, like in Rome;
Lavender surrounds me, in scent and color.

Ravens call with their never-ending drama;
Trees of red, crunching steps, little voices passing in the air.

Cold weather flowers blooming white in pale pink;
You can hear the air;
Everything is moving;
Crisp air, winding thoughts, long shadows.

By: Cindy Green-Ortiz, 11-13-2021

Published Works

I am a published nonfiction author. I spent forty years in cybersecurity. I built systems, broke assumptions, and got good at explaining things that resisted being explained. Eventually someone said, "you should write this down." So I did. Zero Trust Architecture (Cisco Press, 2023) made the concept human. I edited In Zero Trust We Trust (2024) to help another voice do the same. Then Securing AI with Zero Trust Principles (Pearson, 2026) asked the harder question: how do you trust something when trust itself is the problem?

Securing AI using Zero Trust Principles

  • By , , 

  • Published May 21, 2026 by  Cisco Press.

    Securing AI Using Zero Trust Principles

    Strategic Guidance for Defending AI Systems in a Rapidly Evolving Threat Landscape

    Artificial intelligence is reshaping industries, driving innovation in critical sectors such as healthcare, finance, energy, and government. Yet, as organizations integrate AI into business operations, they inherit new risks, many of which conventional security models fail to address. Adversaries are weaponizing AI to automate reconnaissance, bypass defenses, and exploit vulnerable systems. The solution is not more trust, but less.

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  • Published Jul 13, 2023 by  Cisco Press.

    A team of Cisco's leading experts and implementers offer the most comprehensive and substantive guide to Zero Trust, bringing clarity, vision, practical definitions, and real-world expertise to a space that's been overwhelmed with hype. The authors explain why Zero Trust identity-based models can enable greater flexibility, simpler operations, intuitive context in the implementation and management of least privilege security. Then, building on Cisco's own model, they systematically illuminate methodologies, supporting technologies, and integrations required on the journey to any Zero Trust identity-based model.

Zero Trust Architecture

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