Who is AdamCySec?

My cybersecurity journey started when I was nearing the end of my high school years. I needed to pick a career path to follow in college and eventually make good enough money to have an exciting life. My main interests at the time was playing Xbox 360 and building computers for gaming. My first career choice was to work at a computer repair shop where I could build home computers and remove viruses for people, then own a repair shop myself. Luckily that didn't happen as I could never get hired at a PC repair shop in high school or even work at BestBuy Geek squad.

In 2014 there was a major security breach that would cause global discussion about cybersecurity and change my whole life forever. That was the Apple iCloud hack. The hackers in this breach released almost 500 private explicit photos of celebrities that got posted all over the internet. News about the hack was covered by all mainstream media with most of the blame pointing to the end users. "If you didn't take nude photos of yourself, then there wouldn't be any for hackers to steal", this was the stance for many. In my mind, the blame should be all on Apple for not securing users' sensitive data properly. (This iCloud breach is probably why Apple now sends you a 2FA code to your iPhone). This security incident is what led me to take the path of cybersecurity. How did a hacker steal hundreds of photos? What is a web server? How does a DDoS take down PlayStation network? These are all questions I started to ask myself.

Fast forward to 2017, I just completed community college and now need to transfer to university. I did my research and found The University of Texas at San Antonio. This college was awarded the best cybersecurity program of 2014. I knew this is where I wanted to learn. Those 2 years at UTSA taught me the basic building blocks of cybersecurity..Java programming, networking, network security, operating system security, cyber policy, digital forensics, and cyber attack & defense. During my second year at UTSA I decided to start learning PowerShell scripting so I could stand out amongst applicants when it came time to get a SOC analyst job. Knowing PowerShell led me to get a summer internship at Tokio Marine HCC as a security analyst where I was exposed to the life of Enterprise security.

Now it's December 2019 and I've just graduated from UTSA with my Bachelors in cybersecurity. I had spent the past 3 months applying for full time SOC analyst positions and still hadn't received any interview offers. During this month I managed to take and pass my Security+ certification. In the beginning of January 2020 I got a call from Alert Logic and by the end of January I had scored my first security analyst position at Alert Logic.

Today the bulk of my time is spent working as a threat hunter, doing TryHackMe challenges, completing CTF challenges, and having fun with Python. I strive to be the best blue teamer I can be. I believe the only way to effectively defend a network is to learn how to attack it. I plan on using this blog as a way to share the knowledge I've learned to help individuals learn more about cybersecurity and as a reference for my future self.