Nick Neal

Offensive Security Enthusiast

nickneal.dev

Summary

I'm an IT engineer with over ten years of hands-on experience in web applications and their infrastructure. Lately my focus has shifted toward building and securing IT environments, which has developed my strong interest in offensive security. Alongside my career, I’ve spent a lot of time sharpening my offensive skills through self-study and platforms like Hack the Box. I’m also on track to earn my OSCP certification by February 2026.

Skills

Host & Service Enumeration

Active Directory Enumeration & Attacks

Windows & Linux Privilege Escalation

C/Go/Java Development

Bash/Powershell/Python Scripting

Malware Development/Analysis

Kubernetes/Container Security

Web Application Testing

Documenting Processes & Procedures

Certifications & Achievements

RHCSA

Redhat

Expires: April 2028

Work Experience

Syracuse University

IT Engineer - Infrastructure

June 2024 - Present

I have continued enforcing the standards and practices from my previous role. I also designed and provisioned a small on-premises kubernetes cluster to host faculty applications. This was an initiative to reduce our server footprint, and ease the server upgrade process, as well as future-proof further deployments into our environment.

In building the cluster, I focused on tighter security controls. This included:

  • Provisioning a reliable backup solution.
  • Defining a thorough disaster recovery plan with detailed restoration steps.
  • Implementing and testing fine-tuned egress firewall rules to limit intra-cluster and external communication.
  • Design and deploy a solution separate of Istio to encrypt traffic into and within the cluster.
  • Enforcing strong container policies by limiting use of root-owned containers.
  • Forcing the cluster to only run containers signed by specific CAs.

Syracuse University

Computer Consultant II

September 2022 - June 2024

I spent most of my time in this role re-organizing our IT server environment. This included:

  • Tracking down assets and recording them in an asset management system.
  • Upgrading or decommissioning outdated hosts.
  • Determining and enforcing a security baseline thru a centralized configuration management system.
  • Initiating and adhering to a scheduled patching cycle.

To ensure that the environment stayed organized, I scheduled a yearly auditing session to make sure standards were being kept.

North Point Defense

Systems Administrator

January 2021 - August 2022

I was responsible for maintaining physical systems and networks within an on-premisis datacenter as well as managing CI/CD pipelines and tooling within an on-premisis kubernetes cluster. While working here, I became familiar with the NIST SP 800-171 framework, and regularly following it’s audit and compliance requirements.

Wells Fargo

Web Systems Engineer

June 2017 - January 2020

I was part of a small team that focused on the performance and continuous availability of the money movement applications within the bank. I focused mainly on Websphere Application Server, IBM MQ, IBM DB2, Apache, and Suse Linux.

Carfax

Middleware Administrator

April 2016 - September 2016

I was responsible for managing the application and web infrastructure for Carfax, taking on project work for their continuous improvement initiatives.

IBM

Middleware Administrator

August 2013 - April 2016

I was responsible for managing the application and web infrastructure for a few financial and state government clients. I focused mainly on IIS, .NET applications, Websphere Application Server, Oracle Weblogic, Tomcat, and Apache in both Windows and Linux environments.