Security Analyst

Kevin Dawson

336-***-**** • ****************@*****.*** • linkedin.com/in/kevin-dawson-gso • gsocyber.com Work Experience

IT & Security Administrator

NCCJ of The Triad (Contractor) 2023 - Present

• Reduced external attack surface 35% by enforcing 90-day thresholds and removing dormant accounts/devices in Entra ID.

• Remediated over 100 medium-to-critical CVEs, improving endpoint resilience and boosting Microsoft Defender Secure Score.

• Automated Intune onboarding, raising Microsoft Defender coverage from 15% to 100% in 2 weeks.

• Audited AWS environments for misconfigured permissions, exposed endpoints, and insecure S3 buckets. IT Service Analyst II

Allstate 2022 - Present

• Investigated and escalated endpoint, email, and network incidents; supported containment and response coordination with cybersecurity teams.

• Executed lifecycle management and PCI-DSS remediation for 100+ legacy endpoints, ensuring secure decommissioning and compliance validation.

• Authored and maintained technical documentation and process improvement guides to standardize service delivery.

E-Commerce Account Coordinator

Hooker Furnishings 2019 - 2021

• Delivered $25M+ in revenue while ensuring customer service quality and reducing chargebacks 15% through accurate data and improved documentation.

• Optimized digital workflows and implemented process improvements, cutting support tickets 50%. Projects

AWS Security Operations Center (SOC) Lab – Honeypot & Threat Intelligence Pipeline Deployed a Dionaea honeypot in AWS to capture real-world intrusion attempts and integrated GuardDuty, Security Hub, and CloudWatch for IOC correlation and automated alerting. Built Terraform modules for repeatable SOC lab provisioning.

VMware Cybersecurity Lab – Detection Engineering & Threat Simulation Configured pfSense, Suricata, and Nessus in a segmented VMware network to simulate attack chains, analyze traffic patterns, and validate detection rules. Conducted penetration tests and documented remediation reports aligned with CISA standards.

Skills

Security Operations: EDR, GuardDuty, Incident Response, Log analysis, Microsoft Defender, SIEM Identity & Access Management: Active Directory, Entra ID, Intune, Microsoft 365 Automation & Infrastructure-as-Code: CI/CD pipelines, PowerShell, Python, Scripting, Terraform Networking & Cloud: AWS, Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud Security, Firewalls, Network Troubleshooting, TCP/IP Core Competencies: Communication w/non-technical stakeholders, Cross-functional collaboration, Helpdesk Certifications

Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) 2024 - 2027

Microsoft

Certified in Cybersecurity (CC) 2024 - 2027

ISC2

Security+ 2023 - 2026

CompTIA

Education

Bachelor of Arts in Digital Communication Studies • University of North Carolina at Greensboro

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