About
Hey! Thanks for visiting my page.
My name is Austin. I’m a student at SUNY Buffalo in the Information Technology & Management program, with a minor in Cybersecurity.
Most of what I publish here comes out of curiosity: I’ll read about an attack technique or a cloud service, decide I don’t really understand it, and then go build it in a lab until I do. Writing the process down is how I make sure the understanding sticks — and if it helps someone else studying the same thing, even better.
What I focus on
- Offensive fundamentals, defensive mindset. I like building things like backdoors and ransomware in disposable VMs, then turning around and asking what a SOC analyst would actually see in the logs.
- Cloud. I passed the Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104) after spending a summer on it, and I wrote up the full study path.
- Automation. Mostly Python — scripting the boring parts until they run themselves.
A few things that aren’t security
I love hiking, cool sneakers, and playing guitar. I’m also an ex-junior Olympic fencer, which taught me more about handling pressure than any exam has.
Last summer I hiked to the summit of Mt. Fuji — 3,776.24 m / 12,389 ft.
Elsewhere
I was a Top 10 Finalist in Palo Alto Networks’ “Secure the Future” competition — I wrote about what that experience was like.