Professional Experience
IT Support Specialist | University of South Dakota
January 2023 – Present
- Reduced median time-to-resolution for security incidents by analyzing EDR, SIEM (Splunk/ELK), and DNS logs to accelerate investigation of complex escalations.
- Strengthened security policy adherence across the university by resolving over 200 user-facing tickets for MFA, Network Access Control (NAC), and email security controls.
- Mitigated critical threats by analyzing vulnerability scans and IDS/IPS data to recommend and verify network segmentation and patching strategies.
Technical Projects
AWS Serverless Portfolio Website
Architected a secure and scalable serverless portfolio website on AWS, delivered globally and protected by AWS WAF via CloudFront, with a custom domain managed by Route 53 and HTTPS enabled by AWS Certificate Manager. Automated the entire infrastructure deployment using Terraform (Infrastructure as Code) and built a complete CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions to streamline the development and release process.
AWS Automated Threat Response Framework
Designed and deployed an event-driven security framework using Terraform to automatically detect and block malicious network activity in near real-time. Leveraged AWS GuardDuty for threat detection, triggering a Python-based Lambda function via EventBridge to update AWS WAF IP sets and neutralize threats without human intervention.
Technical Skills
Cloud & Infrastructure:
AWS (S3, CloudFront, Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, VPC, Security Groups), Terraform, Docker
Security Operations:
SIEM (Splunk, ELK), Log Correlation, Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR), IDS/IPS, Vulnerability Analysis
Identity & Access (IAM):
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), Network Access Control (NAC), AWS IAM, JWT
Security Frameworks:
NIST Cybersecurity Framework, CIS Critical Security Controls
Network & Application:
DNS-layer Security, Data Loss Prevention (DLP), CASB, Email Security, XSS, SQLi
Languages & Automation:
Python, Bash
Education & Certifications
Bachelor of Science, Computer Science
University of South Dakota | Expected May 2026