Professional Portfolio

Overview

Welcome! I am a Carnegie Mellon University graduate with a B.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering and dual Google Professional Certificates (Cybersecurity & AI). I have hands-on experience in vulnerability assessment, SIEM/IDS monitoring, incident response, network traffic analysis, and secure embedded firmware, and I am looking forward to working with you.

Professional Certificates

My (growing list of) professional certifications.

Projects

GRC & Risk Analysis

GRC Portfolio - Comprehensive security risk assessments that align mitigation strategies with the NIST SP800-30 Rev.1 framework: Bank Risk Assessments, data-leak analysis, DNS/ICMP anomaly detection (NIST CSF) (dansaad.github.io/GRC).

Identity & Access Management

IAM Portfolio - Linux permission hardening, SQL filtering, and infrastructure deployment for remote servers (dansaad.github.io/IAM_SysAdm_SecOps).

Security Operations Center

SOC Portfolio (dansaad.github.io/SOC)

Wazuh SIEM / Suricata IDS deployment, real-time threat detection, and incident-response journaling.
Custom dashboards & automated “Daily Overview” reports cataloguing alerts by geolocation, rule description, and VirusTotal.

Vulnerability Management

Vulnerability Management Portfolio (dansaad.github.io/VulnMgmt)

Full-cycle vulnerability assessments with Tenable Nessus Expert; CVE correlation and severity reporting.

Systems Administration / IT

Linux server installation on bare metal & VMs; Windows/Linux software deployment.
Installed hypervisor (Xen/Xcp-ng) on Intel hardware.
Deployed Wazuh agents on Linux and Windows endpoints.

Embedded Security (Hardware/Embedded)

Object-oriented C/C++ firmware for a secure remote-controlled smart lock / door.

Personal Projects

Phishing Bot Utility (github.com/DanSaad/angler-education) - my AI / SDD (Spec Driven Development) cybersecurity training and experimentation tool.

Technical Skills

Category	Tools & Libraries
Cybersecurity	Wazuh, Suricata, Tenable Nessus, VirusTotal, Wireshark, tcpdump, NIST CSF, CIS Controls, IAM, Zero-Trust
Networking	nmap, TCP/IP Model
Programming / Automation	Spec-Driven-Dev, Intent-Driven-Dev, C, C++, Python, PHP, SQL, Bash, PowerShell
AI	Chat and agentic use with local LLMs on LM Studio (Cherry Studio, OpenCode, Hermes)
IDEs / Editors	VS Code, PyCharm, Eclipse, NetBeans, Arduino
Version Control	Git, SVN
Virtualisation	Linux (bare metal & VMs), Windows, VirtualBox, Xcp-ng

Soft Skills

Analytical problem solving and incident triage under high pressure
Technical and creative writing - reports, docs, slide decks, blogs
High-stakes communication and teaching

Professional Experience

(excerpt)

Role	Company / Setting	Dates
Cybersecurity & IT Associate	Family Business / Home Office	02/2026 - Present
Indie Game Designer	Self-employment	2022 - 2026
COVID-19 Case Investigator / Contact Tracer	New Jersey Dept. of Health	Apr 2021 - Apr 2022

Contact

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dan-saad
Email: dsaad@alumni.cmu.edu