Tate McCauley

Education

Cybersecurity Apr 2026

Scholarships: Academic Scholarship (2024), Charles R. Bluemel Endowed Scholarship (2025)
Coursework: Cloud Architecture, Secure Software Development, Penetration Testing, Web Development

Automation Engineering: Developed custom PowerShell automation to audit Active Directory inventory, programmatically flagging devices with incorrect naming conventions or misconfigured OUs to close security gaps.
Systems Integrity: Manage the security posture of 1,000+ endpoints using CrowdStrike Falcon, executing patch management cycles and maintaining system images to ensure enterprise compliance.
Infrastructure Maintenance: Deploy software updates and maintain system integrity across a hybrid environment, ensuring high availability for library patrons and staff.

Internal Tool Development: Architected and deployed a custom SharePoint vulnerability tracking tool to replace static Excel workflows, leading remediation sprints every 10 days to drive a 58% reduction in compromised hosts.
Event Monitoring: Monitored high-volume security events (450k+) using SecureWorks Taegis XDR, filtering false positives and tuning detection logic to improve risk reporting accuracy.
Data Governance: Conducted data access audits using Varonis, identifying and programmatically securing 3,500+ files with improper public access permissions.

Compliance & Infrastructure: Audited complex firewall configurations (Palo Alto, Cisco) in a hybrid IT/OT environment; reviewed 200+ rules and removed 50 obsolete rules to minimize the attack surface.
Strategic Integration: Conducted post-acquisition security integration, analyzing redundant toolsets and presenting risk-based tech stack rationalization strategies directly to the CTO and CISO.
Social Engineering: Engineered custom phishing campaigns targeting high-value roles to test human resilience and validate security training effectiveness.

Managed OS and software updates for 30+ Linux (RHEL) and Windows Servers, ensuring system integrity and uptime.
Performed weekly server backups and restoration testing while providing Tier 2 hardware support for library workstations.

Full-Stack Cloud Architecture (AWS, React, TypeScript)

Full-Stack Engineering: Built a responsive, type-safe client using React 19, TypeScript, and Vite, integrating Radix UI primitives for a modern, accessible user interface.
Event-Driven Architecture: Engineered a real-time messaging platform using AWS Lambda (Node.js) and API Gateway WebSockets, handling persistent connections and message broadcasting.
Data Design & Optimization: Designed a DynamoDB schema with Global Secondary Indexes (GSIs) to enable efficient, sorted message history retrieval while maintaining low-latency writes.
DevOps & IaC: Provisioned 100% of the backend infrastructure using Terraform modules and wrote automated Bash/PowerShell scripts to bundle Lambda dependencies and deploy the frontend to S3/CloudFront.

Browser Security Extension (React, Python)

Security Scoring Engine: Developed a Python-based analysis engine that evaluates domains across 6 vectors (SSL/TLS, DNS, Email Security, HTTP Headers), utilizing a weighted harmonic mean algorithm to calculate real-time safety scores.