New Jersey | NYC Metro | Remote U.S. | Open to relocation to the Washington, DC metro area
Rakeem Dawson
Cybersecurity Analyst | Security Operations | IAM | Vulnerability Management
Cybersecurity professional transitioning from 9+ years in enterprise IT operations. Experience supporting Microsoft Entra ID, MFA, Conditional Access, privileged-access procedures, Linux systems, endpoint hardening, incident escalation, and IT/OT access controls.
B.S. Cybersecurity and Information Assurance in progress, expected November 2026.
9+
Years Experience
500+
Entra ID Accounts Managed
CySA+ · SSCP
Active Certifications
Nov 2026
B.S. Cybersecurity (WGU)
About me
Nine years in enterprise IT operations, most recently supporting an offshore wind energy operator where day-to-day work sat directly on top of security controls: identity administration in Microsoft Entra ID and Active Directory, MFA enrollment and troubleshooting, Conditional Access policy support, privileged access procedures through PAM360, endpoint hardening, and change management on systems that touched both IT and OT networks.
That background is why I’m moving into security rather than starting over in it. I’ve spent years on the operational side of the controls a SOC alerts on — which accounts exist, why a login failed, what normal looks like on an endpoint before something is wrong with it.
I’m finishing a B.S. in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance at Western Governors University, expected November 2026, and I build and document detection and vulnerability management work in a self-hosted lab on Proxmox and Azure. The lab work is labeled as lab work throughout this site — the professional experience above is separate and is what I did in production.
Active certifications: CySA+ · SSCP · Project+ · AZ-900 · Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Foundations · LPI Linux Essentials
Security Projects
Nessus Vulnerability Assessment
Home lab assessment using Nessus Essentials against Windows 10, Ubuntu Server 22.04, and pfSense systems in an isolated VirtualBox network. The documented work uses a Basic Network Scan; credentialed scanning and verification rescans are not claimed.
Wazuh SIEM Deployment — In Progress
Home lab project. Wazuh is deployed for log collection and alerting; Snort runs on an isolated segment for network detection. TheHive case management is scoped but not yet integrated.
SOC Automation — Not Yet Built
Planned automation layer on top of the Wazuh lab: an alert webhook, Python enrichment, and case creation via TheHive’s API. Scope is defined; no working pipeline exists yet.
Homelab Infrastructure
Home Lab Environment
A self-hosted homelab running on Proxmox virtualization. Built to mirror enterprise security patterns and serve as a hands-on learning and testing platform for real-world cybersecurity scenarios.
All services are self-hosted, self-managed, and documented — giving me direct experience with deployment, configuration, hardening, and troubleshooting across a full security stack.
Security
Identity & Access
Monitoring
Infrastructure
Skills & Tools
Security
Infrastructure
IAM & Automation
Get In Touch
Available for Security Analyst, SOC, IAM, vulnerability management, endpoint security, and security-focused IT operations opportunities. Open to contract, contract-to-hire, and full-time roles.