About

Education

I earned my BS in Information Technology and MS in Cybersecurity from Montclair State University in Montclair, NJ. A lifelong learner by necessity, I enjoy diligently taking the time to help promote cyber hygiene culture to audiences of every kind. Most people describe me as relentlessly curious, and resilient. I like to inform myself of security related news using various credible mediums. Only by staying informed and working together, can we tackle our security challenges effectively!

Experience

My background is in IT, where I have had opportunities to assist both IT and InfoSec teams as an IT Intern, Helpdesk Technician, and IT Engineer I and II for both corporate and SaaS startup companies. As an IT Intern, I spearheaded the task in researching for a replacement antivirus software that would effectively detect growing threats such as ransomware, and also allow the IT team to manage the new antivirus software from a central portal. I shared my findings with my team, and came into an agreement on which antivirus software to choose. Lastly, I also conducted a penetration test on the company's wireless test network using Kali Linux, which was part of my final presentation as an intern.

In my roles as Helpdesk Technician, and IT Engineer I and II, I was a key contributor to the area of security. Many security initiatives were owned by me such as assisting the InfoSec team with creating documentation that was required as part of the company's ISO 27001 certification initiative. In addition, many apps were integrated with Okta, an IdP to streamline authentication and improve identity protection using SAML 2.0 SSO. The security posture of the IT infrastructure was improved by using findings from PingCastle, an open source tool used to assess the Active Directory security level run by the InfoSec team where in the months of September through November 2021, I owned both the vulnerability management and assessment portion. Active Directory domain risk level score was reduced, which resulted in less risk for the domain, and further hardening the infrastructure. Lastly I was able to increase filtering of incoming email by 18% in the span of one month by tweaking settings in Microsoft Defender for Office 365, which resulted in less phishing emails bypassing any filters.

I am currently a Security Engineer where my focus is on cloud security, ensuring that the security of cloud infrastructure is constantly improved.

Interests and Activities

In my free time, I like to play video games, watch movies, work out, and travel.