SOC Analyst, App Security @ ASM Research

Nicolas Portilla Gomez

Security operations across IT, OT, and AI.

I review third party apps for a frontier AI company's public app platform, hunting for prompt injection, unsafe tool calls, and sensitive data exposure before they publish. Before that I closed 300+ incidents in Marathon Petroleum's SOC, including production OT alerts in Dragos inside a regulated critical infrastructure environment. Long term, I'm building toward OT security. Cybersecurity senior at UTSA, graduating December 2026.

  • CompTIA Security+
  • CompTIA CySA+ in progress
  • AWS Cloud Practitioner
  • Microsoft AZ-900
  • Google Cybersecurity Cert
pathway.log

The path so far

Every entry below is real, dated, and verifiable. Help desk and cloud first, then production IT and OT security operations, now AI app security, with OT as the long term destination.

  1. 2024 to 2025 [INFO]

    Security and cloud foundations

    CompTIA Security+, AWS Cloud Practitioner, Microsoft AZ-900, and the Google Cybersecurity Certificate, alongside core work in Azure, AWS, networking, and Python.

  2. JUL to DEC 2025 [INFO]

    Help desk and cloud security · TEKsystems, Trevenx

    Network troubleshooting for 40+ rural ISPs at TEKsystems, then an AWS SIEM pipeline at Trevenx forwarding GuardDuty findings through S3 and Firehose into OpenSearch.

  3. MAY to AUG 2026 [ALERT]

    IT and OT security operations · Marathon Petroleum

    Triaged 50+ alerts weekly and closed 300+ incidents across CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender, and Google SecOps, and monitored production OT alerts in Dragos inside a regulated critical infrastructure energy environment.

  4. 2026 [INFO]

    Industrial control systems security · UTSA

    Coursework attacking and defending simulated plant networks. Ran DNP3 Direct Operate and Modbus coil write attacks, analyzed how Suricata and Zeek caught them, compared rule fidelity, and wrote up the defenses. Write ups below.

  5. OCT 2026 to NOW [ACTIVE]

    SOC Analyst, App Security · ASM Research

    Reviewing third party apps for a frontier AI company's public app platform against a 27 check security policy framework, closing 25 to 30 cases a day. Studying for CompTIA CySA+ alongside.

  6. DEC 2026 [QUEUED]

    Graduation · UTSA

    BBA in Cybersecurity, 3.75 GPA, President's List. Then deeper into OT security.

  7. NEXT [QUEUED]

    Certification goals

    After CySA+, in no fixed order: Cisco CCNA for the networking depth industrial environments run on, ISA/IEC 62443 for industrial automation and control systems security, and possibly CompTIA SecurityX.

ot/

OT and ICS security

At Marathon Petroleum I monitored production OT alerts in Dragos inside a regulated energy environment. In industrial control systems coursework at UTSA I worked the other side of that screen: running live protocol attacks in simulated plant networks and analyzing what the sensors did and did not catch. The rules and environments came from the course. The analysis, the fidelity comparisons, and the defense recommendations in both write ups below are mine.

OTForge · Ironhorse Midstream

Catching a DNP3 Direct Operate with Suricata and Zeek

An unauthorized compressor start command on a simulated natural gas gathering network, and what it takes to catch it. Why a raw byte match rule drowns in false positives where an application layer rule stays quiet, and what changes when the sensor moves from alerting to blocking.

  • Suricata
  • Zeek
  • DNP3
  • IDS and IPS
Read the write up →

OTForge · Meridian Petrochemical

TRITON/TRISIS: defending a safety instrumented system

An attack that pivots through an IP camera left on factory credentials, reaches a petrochemical OT network, and writes a Modbus coil to a Triconex safety controller. Why detection here has to be scoped by destination address: the safety system and the process controller are indistinguishable on the wire.

  • Modbus
  • Triconex SIS
  • XENOTIME
  • Pivoting
Read the write up →
rules/

Detection work (enterprise)

The enterprise side of the same practice. A small, growing library of platform agnostic Sigma rules mapped to MITRE ATT&CK, where one rule converts to KQL (Sentinel), SPL (Splunk), or YARA-L (Google SecOps). The point is not collecting rules, it is showing the thinking: technique → log source → logic → fidelity and tuning. Every rule here is fully documented before the next one starts.

Detection Tactic Technique Log source
Windows Security event log cleared Defense Impairment T1685.005 Windows Security (1102)
Shadow copy deletion via vssadmin Impact T1490 Windows process creation
Browse the rules and write ups →

Each rule ships with a write up covering detection logic, expected false positives, and tuning notes.

cloud/

Cloud projects

Detections are only as good as your understanding of the environment they run in. These builds are the cloud and infrastructure foundation underneath the security work.

AWS

AWS SIEM log analysis pipeline

A cloud native SIEM built during my Trevenx internship. GuardDuty findings are forwarded through S3 and Firehose into OpenSearch for centralized log analysis, dashboards that update in real time, and high severity alert triggers. Lives under the Trevenx org.

  • GuardDuty
  • OpenSearch
  • S3
  • Firehose
  • VPC
Azure

Azure administration lab series

14 documented labs covering identity, governance, networking, storage, compute, containers, data protection, and monitoring. Each lab is written up as its own report. Browse the index below.

  • Entra ID
  • RBAC
  • ARM and Bicep
  • AKS
  • Azure Monitor
experience/

Where I have done the work

SOC Analyst, App Security

Oct 2026 to Present

ASM Research · Contracted to a frontier AI company

  • Perform security reviews of third party apps before they publish on a frontier AI company's public app platform, from small consumer tools to customer facing apps from Fortune 500 companies.
  • Assess apps for prompt injection, undeclared or dynamic calls to external tools, and solicitation of sensitive user data, issuing approve or reject determinations against a 27 check security policy framework.
  • Use AI agents to automate portions of each review while keeping the final call human, validating model output to catch hallucinations.
  • Close 25 to 30 cases daily at an average handle time of about 7 minutes, documenting every determination in case management software.

Information Technology Intern (Cybersecurity)

May 2026 to Aug 2026

Marathon Petroleum · Cybersecurity Incident Detection and Response Team

  • Owned alerts end to end in a flat SOC, triaging 50+ weekly and closing 300+ incidents across CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender, and Google SecOps (SIEM), from first alert through root cause analysis and remediation.
  • Monitored and investigated OT security alerts in Dragos inside a regulated critical infrastructure energy environment, extending threat hunting coverage across converged IT and OT systems.
  • Identified a manual reporting bottleneck and designed an AI assisted notification workflow in Google SecOps, cutting analyst drafting time from over 12 minutes to a single click; executed SOAR playbooks for repeatable investigations.
  • Used Falcon Real Time Response to collect host artifacts, contain, and remediate threats on enterprise endpoints; built automated CrowdStrike response workflows supported by Python and PowerShell.
  • Enriched escalations with intel from Recorded Future, VirusTotal (GTI), and Proofpoint; supported least privilege IAM in Entra ID and GCP.

Cloud Security Intern

Aug 2025 to Dec 2025

Trevenx

  • Built an AWS SIEM pipeline forwarding GuardDuty findings to OpenSearch through S3 and Firehose, with dashboards and high severity alerting.

Level 1 Help Desk Technician

Jul 2025 to Aug 2025

TEKsystems

  • Resolved 30+ weekly VoIP, IPTV, and DSL tickets for 40+ rural ISPs at a 92%+ first call resolution rate, escalating through ServiceNow.

EMT-B

Dec 2022 to Sep 2025

Allegiance Mobile Health

  • 100+ emergency responses with rapid triage, cross team coordination, and calm decisions under real pressure. Trained 3+ new EMTs on unit protocols and radio procedures.

Security operations and IR

  • CrowdStrike Falcon
  • Microsoft Defender
  • Google SecOps
  • Dragos (OT)
  • Proofpoint
  • Recorded Future
  • VirusTotal (GTI)
  • Suricata
  • Zeek

AI and application security

  • Prompt injection review
  • LLM tool call analysis
  • Sensitive data solicitation review
  • Policy based app vetting

Detection and automation

  • Sigma
  • MITRE ATT&CK
  • GitHub Actions CI
  • KQL, SPL, YARA-L
  • Python
  • PowerShell
  • Bash
  • SQL

OT and ICS

  • DNP3
  • Modbus
  • SCADA
  • Safety systems (SIS)
  • IEC 61511
  • Purdue model
  • IT and OT segmentation

Cloud and identity

  • Azure
  • AWS
  • Google Cloud
  • Entra ID
  • GCP IAM
  • Wiz
  • Docker

Networking and frameworks

  • TCP/IP
  • Cisco IOS
  • Wireshark
  • NIST CSF
  • ISO 27001
  • GDPR
  • OWASP
  • ServiceNow
contact/

Get in touch

Always happy to talk about security operations, detection engineering, OT security, or reviewing AI apps. The fastest way to reach me is email or LinkedIn.