Saïd S.
on my way to the SOC

First experience. Server administration and maintenance, alongside the security side of the role. Set up and secured firewalls with IPS/IDS and network interface configuration, ran vulnerability scans, access control and system hardening, and delivered cybersecurity awareness lectures in high schools.

A few months in public sector IT. Handled system upgrades from patch deployments to software dependency management, daily backups with retention policies and integrity checks, secured IT profiles and assets, and ran basic intrusion testing on database servers, then addressed what it found. Kept the Bash, PowerShell and Python automation scripts alive and wrote the update reports to go with them.

The degree pursued alongside professional roles. Three years, with cybersecurity as the specialisation and strong academic results.

Eight months building web applications end to end for real clients. Front-end and back-end features primarily in PHP, translating client needs into technical specifications, handling client requests and resolving issues, unit and integration testing, and continuously improving the existing applications.

Two years inside the IT of a CAC 40 energy giant. Built and tested IoT systems with a focus on security, ran security assessments and network exposure testing, deployed Zabbix monitoring which improved incident detection by 70 percent, automated tasks in Bash cutting manual workload by 30 percent, led security awareness sessions with simulated phishing, vishing and CEO-fraud exercises, took part in a cyber crisis simulation, and managed users and access rights for sensitive industrial zones. This is where the focus shifted, from offensive curiosity to detection and incident response.