6:30 AM

This time sees the first attempt of getting up and ready for the workday ahead! The morning routine is almost always aided by music which helps overcome the heavy eyes after waking up. The commute to work (located in Burwood) is currently a 20-minute drive however, with the head office relocation to the more central, Cremorne (Richmond), I am looking forward to the train commute to catch up on podcasts.

8:00 AM

I aim to get to work by 8:00 am to start my day. The kitchen facilities provided at work mean that breakfast is usually prepared there and had with colleagues in the main kitchen area. After all the “good mornings” and a quick catch-up with the team, the day begins!

8:30 AM

The initial actions of the morning are all about catching up on emails, overnight security events, and network changes that may have occurred the night before to understand the next actions.

Working within the Cyber Security Team, the first point of call today is to follow up with the team, how the firmware upgrade of the firewalls went last night. Always good to hear, it was a successful update!

As it is the start of the week, I will be spending most of the morning compiling reports and providing analytics to the team as well as working on a presentation to address a security event that happened late last week.

Provided there are no major incidents within the network, the day will usually consist of a mixture of the following:

• Project work: Longer planned pieces of work with the aim to accomplish OKRs (Objective Key Results), probably better known as KPIs within other businesses. These are milestones that we look to complete by the end of the quarter. This can be anything from investigating a new log source into our SIEM (Security Incident Event Monitoring) to introducing a new security platform.
• BAU (Business as usual): These are dynamic pieces of work that pop up during the day and week, that are either initiated by a security event or requests from other teams.
• Meetings: These meetings can be anything from new projects started from other teams that require cybersecurity advice, discussion, and planning of projects or implementation of technical configuration to one of the many platforms managed by the Cyber Security Team.

12:00 PM

Discussion amongst the team has begun to understand whether everyone has brought in lunch or whether to head down to some of the local cafes. Today the verdict is souvlaki!

1:00 PM

I am now heading over to a meeting to discuss and plan with the networking team surrounding further segmentation of our core network to continually uplift our security posture. One thing that I personally enjoy, is the discussion amongst other teams as I believe it builds up the relationship and helps to understand how different teams play a part in the bigger picture. Not only this, but it aids understanding to know who to approach with future engagements within the business.

2:00 PM

While it's fresh in my mind, I like to act on planning out what was discussed in the meeting to implement into the network. Due to the nature of the systems managed within the team, there is always the potential for misconfiguration that can affect the entire network. In order to mitigate the risk as much as possible, I put together a change request that outlines all the aspects that will be created or modified within the systems.

I have scheduled this change to occur this Thursday after hours.

3:30 PM

A large portion towards the end of today is spent working through our identity management system to help streamline and automate an outdated process. Working closely with a team member, we go through the logical methods available to take to be able to implement, determine which is the best fit for our environment both now and moving forwards as well as begin the configuration within the platform.

This development will ultimately form the new way both computers and users within the network authenticate in a more secure and automated manner allowing for us to move on to the next big thing!

5:30 PM

Time to head home! Although I am driving home hitting the peak hour traffic, with the weather coming into summer and music through the speakers, it isn’t too bad.

6:30 PM

After getting home and settling in, I look to preparing dinner for the night and relaxing for the rest of the night.