About Me
I'm finishing a B.S. in Cybersecurity, but most of the way I troubleshoot systems came from industrial maintenance and controls.
That work taught me to trace dependencies, isolate variables, and be careful about changing something just because it looks wrong.
Cybersecurity ended up feeling a lot more familiar than I expected.
From Industrial Maintenance to Cybersecurity
Before cybersecurity, I worked around automation, controls, electrical and mechanical systems, and equipment that had to stay running. You learn pretty quickly that the first answer is not always the right one. A fault on one machine can be caused by something several steps away, and changing the wrong thing can make the original problem harder to see.
When I moved deeper into networking and security, that habit carried over. I care less about whether a dashboard says a rule exists and more about whether I can prove the traffic actually follows the path I designed.
Configuration tells me what I intended. Testing tells me what actually happened.
How I Approach the Work
1. Prove It
If I say a path is blocked, I want to test it. A rule existing in a dashboard is not enough.
2. Test Both IP Stacks
If the network is dual-stack, IPv4 and IPv6 both get tested. One working the way I expect does not prove the other one does.
3. Keep Access Narrow
A client should get access to the application or service it actually needs instead of broad access to whatever network happens to contain the backend.
4. Document Reality
If the real network and the documentation disagree, the documentation is useless. That is why NetBox became part of the rebuild instead of something I planned to clean up later.
Life Outside the Lab
Outside the lab, most of my time is with my wife and kids.
The homelab is fun, but it also has to survive normal family life. That is probably one reason I care so much about making changes carefully and documenting what I touched.
Find Me Online
Most of my public technical work is here on the site, on GitHub, or on LinkedIn. If you want to see the code and repositories I have made public, GitHub is the best place to start.