Masters in Cyber Defense
In Spring 2025, I was accepted into the 4+1 Cyber Defense program at Dakota State University, allowing me to simultaneously complete my undergraduate and graduate coursework. Beginning this fall, I started my first master’s-level course, INFA 713, which focuses on managing security risks at an enterprise level. This course emphasizes advanced methodologies in threat assessment, risk management, and the development of formal security documentation. Through real-world case studies and hands-on assignments, I am learning how to properly evaluate organizational vulnerabilities, identify threats, and construct professional security plans and business-level deliverables that align with industry standards and best practices. This program is strengthening both my technical foundation and my ability to communicate risk in a structured, actionable way for stakeholders and leadership teams.
Documents Written
Risk Assessment
Risk Mitigation
These purposal documents will be available for viewing in the documents subpage.
Bachelors in Cybersecurity
In Fall 2024, I began my first year at Dakota State University while simultaneously working full-time as a Junior Systems Administrator and Technical Consultant at an MSP. Balancing a full academic course load with a demanding professional role has been challenging, but it’s also been one of the biggest drivers of my growth. The pressure to perform in both environments pushed me to excel throughout my undergraduate journey, earning a cumulative 3.7 GPA in a cybersecurity-focused curriculum.
My coursework includes Computer Science II, Networking II, Offensive Security, Reverse Engineering, Survey of Enterprise Systems, Software Secuity and Threat Hunting & Incident Response. Taking these courses significantly expanded my programming and security engineering skillset. Through these classes, I strengthened my abilities in Python, C/C++, PowerShell, assembly (NASM), and API development while learning to write cleaner, more structured, and more maintainable code. Working through complex assignments such as memory-safe C programs, low-level debugging, API integration projects, Python automation, and building small security tools helped me grow from simply “knowing how to code” to understanding how to develop and secure applications end-to-end.
I gained hands-on experience with a wide range of professional cybersecurity tools. In my labs and real-world projects, I used Metasploit for exploitation and enumeration; IDA Pro and WinDbg for reverse engineering and debugging; Wazuh and Elastic (ELK) for SIEM log analysis; ConnectSecure for vulnerability scanning; Kibana and Arkime for packet and event investigation; and Nessus for compliance and vulnerability assessment. These tools allowed me to bridge the gap between theory and practice—identifying threats, analyzing logs, correlating events across systems, and replicating real enterprise workflows.
By combining full-time MSP experience, rigorous cybersecurity coursework, and extensive hands-on tooling, I have developed a strong technical foundation across programming, system administration, offensive security, and blue-team analysis.