Portfolio Book — Carlos Menezes

From tech passion to a home mini-SOC

A narrative view of cybersecurity, development and infrastructure projects.

1. Timeline

  • 90s–2000 — BBS SysOp in Rio de Janeiro, managing users and connections.
  • 2000s — LAN house admin (>100 PCs), daily work with networking and hardware.
  • 2017–2019 — BeiraZoo: admin and management support, operational discipline.
  • 2019–2022 — INTELCIA: team supervision, KPIs and leadership.
  • 2022–2024 — CUF: customer service, problem solving and people focus.
  • 2024–… — Technical Programmer Course (IEFP) + cybersecurity lab (Splunk, Linux, IDS/IPS).

2. Home SOC Overview

My main portfolio project is building a mini-SOC at home, using only open-source tools and my own Linux server. This SOC integrates:

  • Splunk as SIEM, ingesting auth.log, syslog, UFW, Apache, MySQL and ban_script logs.
  • Suricata/Snort as IDS/IPS, generating network alerts.
  • UFW + scripts for automatic response to SSH brute force.
  • Threat Intel via external malicious IP lookups.
  • Dashboards split into “Command Center” (main) and “Advanced Center”.

3. Highlighted Technical Projects

Each project has its own page on the site, with SPLs, scripts, screenshots and explanations:

  • Splunk SOC — brute-force detection, auto-ban, threat intel, geoIP and risk scoring.
  • Webmin & Linux Admin — user/service management, firewall and backups.
  • LDAP — OpenLDAP with PAM/SSSD, centralized auth and password policies.
  • MEI (Java + SQL) — CRUD app with MVC, persistence and ER diagram.

The Portfolio Book acts as a narrative index: readers can open internal pages (splunk_soc.html, ldap.html, webmin.html, mei.html) to see technical details, SPLs and screenshots.

4. Next Steps

  • Add a secure API for manual bans and external integrations.
  • Explore alerting automations via SMS/WhatsApp/Email.
  • Experiment with other SIEMs (e.g. Wazuh, Elastic Security) using similar architecture.
  • Study certifications (CompTIA Security+, CCST, etc.) aligned with the lab practice.