Computer Science and Cyber Security student, focused on blue team / defensive security.
I build things on the web, and I'm learning to defend them. Second-year computer science student in Ho Chi Minh City. I run my own internet-facing server, read what hits it, and write up what I find.
Growing up I wanted to be a doctor. Medicine looked like the most direct way to help people. What almost nobody knew was that I spent my nights on computers: I taught myself Python, then C++, wrote small tools to automate the games I played, and read the corners of the internet where security people talk to each other. I was not there to break anything, I just liked how they thought. I kept that quiet and told everyone I was going into medicine.
That changed on 6 June 2023, over a family dinner, when I met P., who founded E—, one of the strongest security teams in Vietnam and a name that travels well outside it. A few months earlier his team had gone up against the best in the world and made the national news. The competition record was not what stayed with me. It was the way he talked about defending systems, data, and the trust people put in both, as though the work were custodial rather than heroic. Cybersecurity, I understood for the first time, is also a way of protecting people, in a world that moves more of itself online every year. The teenage hobby turned out to be a serious craft.
In time I admitted that medicine was not where I was strongest, though the instinct behind it never left. A blue team does for systems roughly what a doctor does for people: monitor, detect, respond, protect. It is quiet and patient work, and mostly invisible when it goes well. That is the part of security I want.
I don't want to break things to look clever. I want to be the one who keeps them standing.
I am now in my second year of computer science, building the programming and systems background the defensive side needs and pointing it at blue team and SOC work. Two years in, I know how little that is. What I do have is a server that gets attacked every day, logs I have learned to read, and the habit of writing down what I find so that someone else can check it.
Built and maintain the public site for a multi-branch salon, keeping booking and branch information current.
A student journalism and photography club I founded, built on real human stories, and ran with a small team of contributors.
A small home lab to practise monitoring, log analysis and incident response. The server took over 400,000 failed SSH logins; the parser and the Sigma rules that flag them are public.
Set on medicine as a way to help people — while quietly teaching myself to code on the side.
My first taste of building something technical with other people — and helping lead it.
A family dinner, a conversation with P., and an unexpected door into cybersecurity.
Elected to lead it — where I learned to really look at people and their stories.
A Humans of New York–style project: real stories from students, teachers, staff, and neighbours — gathered to bring a community a little closer.
Began a CS degree in Ho Chi Minh City with the direction set early: defensive security — blue team and SOC.
Finished CCNA and now working through CCNP, the networking groundwork every blue team role is built on.
The next step I'm aiming for — a network-defense certification focused on monitoring, detection, and response: squarely blue team.
Front-end and full-stack freelance work — turning briefs into clean, maintainable sites for real clients.
Where I'm headed: monitoring, detection, and incident response. Networking now, security operations next.
From HONQ on, I photograph people and moments — the same attention to detail I bring to the work.