About
~$ whoami
I’m Alan Donovan, a Brisbane-based cyber security practitioner and embedded software engineer. I spend my days writing firmware for industrial and operational technology (OT) systems, and the rest of my time learning how attackers operate so I can get better at detecting and stopping them.
My focus is security operations, threat intelligence and detection engineering. A background in OT, embedded systems and incident investigation gives me a view of security that starts at the hardware and works its way up.
I publish a Daily Threat Brief: a short morning summary of new vulnerabilities, actively exploited CVEs and the security news worth knowing about.
~$ cat current_role.txt
Embedded Software Engineer & OT Support at Petro Industrial (Dec 2022 to present)
- Design and maintain embedded firmware for industrial control and OT environments (C/C++, RTOS, STM32)
- Integrate software with hardware and PLC/OT systems, and run field diagnostics and root-cause analysis
- Put secure update and deployment processes in place
- Provide front-line OT support: triaging incidents, coordinating fixes across teams and documenting the results
~$ ls ~/education
| Qualification | Institution | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Master of Cyber Security | Charles Sturt University | In progress, finishing 2027 |
| Graduate Certificate in Cloud Computing & Virtualisation | Charles Sturt University | Coursework complete, conferral Nov 2026 |
| Graduate Certificate in Cyber Security | Charles Sturt University | Completed. Executive Dean’s Award |
| Bachelor of Information Technology | RMIT University | Completed |
Certifications & training: CompTIA A+ · Microsoft Applied Skills (Active Directory Domain Services) · AWS Academy Graduate: Cloud Security Foundations · Splunk Intro · ongoing TryHackMe SOC and blue-team paths
Memberships: Australian Computer Society (ACS) Certified Technologist (MACS CT) · Australian Information Security Association (AISA)
~$ skills –list
- Security operations: alert triage, log analysis and traffic inspection with Splunk, Sysmon and Wireshark; mapping activity to MITRE ATT&CK
- Threat modelling & risk: NIST risk management concepts, incident analysis, Zero Trust (NIST SP 800-207)
- Offensive fundamentals: Active Directory credential auditing (Hashcat), OSINT reconnaissance (SpiderFoot), CEH methodology
- Cloud security: AWS IAM and least-privilege design, S3/EBS protection, CloudTrail, AWS Config, CloudWatch
- Cryptography: DES/AES/RSA internals, PKI, Kerberos, S/MIME, SPF/DKIM/DMARC, secure password hashing
- Embedded & OT: STM32, C/C++, RTOS, hardware-software integration, PLC/OT networking
- Infrastructure: Active Directory, Group Policy, Windows Server, TCP/IP, ARP, DNS, VPN
~$ history | tail
Before IT, I spent over a decade in pathology laboratories, including supervising lab teams and running quality control, NATA audits and staff training. That background still shapes how I work. I follow procedures carefully, document thoroughly, and stay calm when something goes wrong.
~$ echo “Let’s connect”
I’m working towards a dedicated SOC / threat intelligence / detection engineering role. I’m an Australian citizen, eligible for Baseline or NV1 clearance processing. If you’d like to talk about security, embedded systems or opportunities, get in touch or find me on LinkedIn.