I never shy at a challenge. In May of 2024, I completed a 250 mile bike ride and am training for an Ironman in October. Every year I push myself at the Hotter’N Hell Quadzilla (a mix of mountain biking, 100 mile ride, 100k gravel ride and a half marathon trail run all hours apart from each other). Several years ago I decided I wanted a challenge and Cybersecurity seemed like one of those daunting things that always seemed out of my league and so I went for the challenge. I have dug deep, I am constantly listening to podcasts, studying for certs, reading cyber news and getting as much out of the industry as I can.

Now I’m the head of a SOC for a 13 billion dollar bank with over 80 branches across the state of Texas. I drive many of the security initiatives and architecture, keeping our company and customer data secure. I have installed a brand new IDS system and rearchitected its implementation to give maximum visibility with detections that most standard IDS systems will not flag on.

I had a years-long issue dropped in my lap to solve org-wide exposed file security and was given a tool and a timeline. With the help of Varonis and a LOT of manual, time-consuming permission adjustments, policy creation and some magic, I fully secured our file shares to making things much more secure and contained.

I onboarded DefenseStorm, a financial specific MSSP, and made any and all connections possible to ingest logs for correlation analysis and it was a major success. I’m very adept at quick incident response, leveraging the SIEM, our EDR logs and various platforms to quickly form conclusions, find root-cause analysis and remediate issues.

I administer our border and branch firewalls during a MPLS to SD-WAN migration initiative, installed HA borders for maximum uptime and redudancy. I regularly tune our WAF, renew SSL certificates, adjust policies and learning suggestions and configure and deploy branch firewalls and policies.

In a few short years, I’ve gotten the CompTIA Network+, Security+, CySA+ and PenTest+. I’m certified with 3CX VOIP solutions and level 2 Dante tech for AV networking. I’m currently taking a course on Python, halfway through the Fortinet NSE4 and working on my CompTIA CASP+. I love incident response, file security and eventually want to specialize in penetration testing (both technical and physical pentests) and social engineering.

Some of my other passions!

I’ve had the opportunity to play guitar and keys on many studio albums, open for some big artists on stage, play in front of tens of thousands of people and collaborate with some friends in the industry. I love to create and write and will always have the utmost passion for getting songs stuck in peoples’ heads.

I have a passion for many things. I play guitar and keys, love cycling/running/snowboarding, photography, computers, design, traveling and coffee. I’m a mix of creative and technical. I love logic, databases, lists, things in their place but love the chaos of art and design. And I like to mix the left and right brain and am quite fluent in making that switch.

When I was in middle school, my dad started a company called Gateway Cabling. I was punching down Cat5 jacks when I was 14 years old. That company was purchased by a friend and I’ve worked at Gateway Cabling for 11+ years. We travel the state and literally the US wiring up businesses, homes, hospitals, jails and data centers. We build out LAN rooms, pull infrastructure cabling, terminate and fusion splice fiber optic cabling, install IP camera systems, VOIP solutions, conference room integrations, access control, servers/switches/racks, ladder racks, AV cabling, device install and configuration and IT management.

When I was in my early 20’s, I started my own company, Brady Cases, and started building custom ATA cases for musical equipment, weapons, computers, production companies, medical devices, schools, etc. Everything was built custom to order, designed in 3D CAD, programmed cut sheets in Excel, materials run through CNC machines that I fabricated, and assembled to spec. We got to build for tech companies like IBM, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Epson, Garmin, etc and I got to work with many of my guitar heroes and some chart-topping artists like Switchfoot, Chicago, Steve Vai, Collective Soul, Seether, etc (client list here). The company grew and grew and became a little too big and too involved for me. For health and family reasons, I decided to pause and put it to a close.

In my spare time, you’ll find me cycling very long distances, running marathons, writing music, shooting photos of my family, volunteering for non-profits around town, and trying to make a difference in the lives of those in need. I have a passion for people and helping them be a better version of themselves.

I have aspirations to be eventually be a pen-tester and specifically work with developers in application security and design to keep users and company data safe from prying eyes and vulnerabilities. Making the world a little bit safer!