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Security Operations · Incident Response · Detection Engineering

FredZirbel

I investigate threats, improve detection quality, and build practical workflows that help analysts move from alert to defensible action.

  • Dallas, TX · Remote, hybrid, or onsite
  • Open to relocation within the U.S.
  • U.S. work authorized · No sponsorship required now or in the future
  • 2 years of professional cybersecurity experience
  • Eligible and willing to obtain a U.S. security clearance
  • Available to interview · Two weeks' notice to start

01Experience

Critical Start

Promoted from Security Analyst to Principal Security Analyst through three roles of increasing scope in investigations, customer response, detection tuning, remediation, and analyst mentorship.

Principal Security Analyst

Jul 2026 - Present

  • Triage, investigate, and respond to security incidents from detection through resolution across an MDR operation covering 200+ customer environments, correlating evidence from 30+ integrated EDR, SIEM, identity, and network security products to determine scope, root cause, and required containment.
  • Analyze endpoint, network, and log data directly within Cortex XDR, CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender XDR, and SentinelOne to identify malicious activity and confirm attack techniques across customer environments.
  • Execute live containment and remediation actions, including host isolation, credential resets, session revocation, email deletion, and file quarantine, through a dual authorization workflow that removes attacker access and malicious artifacts.
  • Communicate investigation findings, response status, and remediation recommendations to customer stakeholders, documenting response actions and incident outcomes during high priority incidents across a 24x7 MDR operation with rotating overnight and weekend shift coverage.
  • Maintain a 16 minute average time to investigation while handling 300+ alerts monthly, applying an in-house AI platform across triage, investigation, correlation, and incident documentation while validating all findings against source telemetry.
  • Train and mentor L1 analysts on investigation workflow, AI platform usage, and client ready incident documentation.

Senior Security Analyst

Jul 2025 - Jul 2026

  • Reconstructed attacker activity with custom KQL across endpoint, identity, and email evidence sources, including URL clicks, file downloads, and process telemetry, to establish incident scope and root cause.
  • Briefed customer stakeholders during three to five weekly high priority incident calls, communicating findings, attribution, and remediation guidance that informed response decisions.
  • Correlated indicators of compromise across customer environments to identify shared phishing and malware campaigns, enabling coordinated response beyond individual alerts.
  • Engineered 500+ suppression filters using KVP logic and regex within the MDR detection and orchestration platform, eliminating thousands of recurring false positive alerts and improving analyst signal quality.

Security Analyst

Oct 2024 - Jul 2025

  • Triaged identity, phishing, malware, and endpoint security alerts across four EDR and SIEM platforms, producing scoped escalations for senior incident responders.
  • Developed custom KQL queries across identity, endpoint, and email telemetry in Microsoft Sentinel and Defender to accelerate incident scoping and detection.

02Projects

03Credentials

Earned certifications

In progress

ISACA CISM - In Progress

Education

M.S. Cybersecurity & Information Assurance
Western Governors University

B.S. Information Systems
The University of Texas at Arlington

Capability matrix

Engineering capabilities developed through active hands-on projects and continued technical development.

Investigation

  • Defender XDR
  • CrowdStrike Falcon
  • Cortex XDR
  • SentinelOne
  • Sumo Logic

Detection

  • KQL
  • Sigma
  • Microsoft Sentinel
  • Splunk ES
  • MITRE ATT&CK

Engineering

  • Python
  • FastAPI
  • Docker
  • GitHub Actions
  • ELK Stack