Open to opportunities

Nicholas Woodward

@nicholaswoodward

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Cybersecurity engineer specializing in threat hunting, detection, and automation.

United States

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What I'm looking for

I seek a role focused on detection engineering, threat hunting, and automation where I can drive measurable improvements in detection coverage, reduce false positives, and mentor SOC teams.

I am a cybersecurity engineer with 8+ years of SOC operations, threat analysis, and threat hunting experience, focused on improving detection efficiency and incident response through metric-driven automation and advanced hunts.

At Liberty Mutual I led proactive threat hunting, engineered and tuned SIEM detections in Splunk ES, CrowdStrike Falcon, and Azure Sentinel, and strengthened cloud security monitoring across AWS and Azure while building SOAR playbooks and IOC dashboards.

I have driven vulnerability and compliance remediation using Nessus, Qualys, Tanium, and CrowdStrike, automated PCI assessments and threat intel ingestion, authored runbooks and detections in Confluence and Jira, and delivered technical reporting to senior stakeholders.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Cyber Engineer

Liberty Mutual

Jul 2017 - Aug 2025 (8 years 1 month)

Led detection engineering and threat response efforts, tuning SIEMs and automating SOAR playbooks to reduce false positives and accelerate incident response; improved visibility with integrated threat intel and cloud monitoring.

Azure Sentinel AWS CloudTrail SOAR Threat Hunting Python SIEM Tuning

Systems Engineer

ASM Research

Feb 2016 - Jul 2017 (1 year 5 months)

Conducted enterprise vulnerability scanning and remediation for a VA medical center, implementing baseline controls and remediating critical service vulnerabilities across systems and devices.

Nessus Vulnerability Management FTP Telnet Mitigation Asset Management

IT Intern

San Diego Chargers

Jun 2015 - Feb 2016 (8 months)

Managed security tools and configured network infrastructure for facility and stadium operations, ensuring secure access and maintaining perimeter defenses.

Dell SecureWorks Qualys Palo Alto Firewalls Access Control System Administration Security Monitoring Dell Secureworks

Education

Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework

Penn State University

Bachelor of Science, Security and Risk Analysis

2011 - 2015

Activities and societies: Penn State Honors Program; 3× Dean's List

Completed a Bachelor of Science in Security and Risk Analysis with a minor in Information Sciences and Technology and participated in the Penn State Honors Program; named to the Dean's List three times.