ABOUT

Amanda Grau

Security Analyst

My Story

HOW I GOT HERE

My path to cybersecurity started with a ransomware attack at a small business where I worked. Watching the IT team trace the breach back to a single unsecured port made me want to understand systems well enough to spot gaps before attackers do. Since then I’ve completed a full-stack engineering program, earned my CompTIA Security+, and built a home SOC lab to practice hands-on.

WHY THIS SITE EXISTS

I’ll always be a pen-and-paper person at heart, but paper doesn’t index well. I built this site to do what a good notebook does: keep the work organized and visible. If someone else breaking into cybersecurity finds it useful, that’s a bonus. For employers, this is where the real work lives.

arsenal

tech stack

security tools

Wireshark tcpdump Nmap Metasploit Security Onion Splunk

siem & monitoring

Security Onion Splunk ELK Stack

programming

Python SQL Bash HTML/CSS

operating systems

Kali Linux Ubuntu Windows Active Directory

networking

TCP/IP DNS DHCP Firewalls VPN Network Segmentation

frameworks

NIST CSF NIST RMF Cyber Kill Chain Diamond Model Pyramid of Pain

certs

certifications

comptia security+

Google Cybersecurity Professional Certificate

projects

labwork & code

A mix of security labs, tools, and engineering projects – documented work from the home lab and beyond.

google cybersecurity labs

Wireshark tcpdump Metasploit Splunk Linux Python SQL

Hands-on labs completed through the Google Cybersecurity Professional Certificate program covering threat detection, incident response, and network analysis.

medMinder

Python Flask PostgresSQL Bootstrap

A prescription tracking application engineered using secure development practices and modern web application architecture. 

network port scanner

Python Nmap Socket Threading placeholder

A simple Python GUI application to scan open ports on a host using socket and Nmap.