Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity, in my view, is not a separate discipline but a direct extension to IT Operations and Systems Administration. A secure and resilient environment starts with the foundation of well-managed infrastructure, with the addition of tools, assessments, and processes that contribute to building and maintaining a well-secured IT landscape.

More will be added to this section of the course of time. On the Cyber Defense side, I talk about the major fundamental Cybersecurity Best Practices I learned about in my journey with the CompTIA Security+ certification, followed by server and endpoint hardening, event log & network traffic analysis.

On the Cyber Attack side, I explore simulated attack examples in a contained environment on applying what I learned in my pentesting & offensive security studies. I run through some Cyber Attack examples, and then further discuss how these attacks can be mitigated and protected against.

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CYBER DEFENSE - Best Practices, Baselines, & Labs

5 labs

Cybersecurity Best Practices

Foundational principles for building a strong, secure, and resilient environment.

Establishing a Cybersecurity Baseline for IT Operations

Bare-minimum checklist for cybsercurity basics in IT Operations.

Active Directory Security Hardening

A layered security hardening project I put together after installing the AD DS Server Role on a Windows Server 2022 Evaluation Version.

Windows 11 Endpoint Security Hardening

Windows Endpoint security hardening practices from my Hyper-V Extended lab.

Windows Event Log Monitoring

Analyzing Windows logs to detect suspicious activity and anomalies.

Network Traffic Analysis

Inspecting packets/flows to identify protocols, anomalies, and potential issues.

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CYBER ATTACK - Simulated Attack Labs & Mitigation Strategies

7 labs

Lab demonstration of ARP spoofing to simulate a man-in-the-middle attack.

Network Hash Capture & Cracking

Capturing authentication material and testing cracking workflows in a lab setting.

RDP Brute Force & Remote Login

Demonstrating brute force and remote login of RDP in a lab environment.

Web Server Enumeration & Exploitation

Reconnaissance, service mapping, and exploitation on a lab web stack.

Active Reconnaissance

Probing targets and services to build a picture of the environment.

Raspberry Pi Web App Tinkering

Raspberry Pi–hosted web app for practice and experimentation.

NAS Security Attack & Defense Lab

TrueNAS lab: privilege escalation, detection, response, and hardening.