whoami

My name is Zach, and welcome to my journey through IT and cybersecurity. The purpose of this blog is to share my thoughts, lessons learned, and walkthroughs of things I’m working on.

A little about me; I graduated from Iowa State University with a degree in Management Information Systems (MIS). After graduating, I started working at an ISP as an IT Specialist. Over time, I’ve become a bit of a jack of all trades, master of none. Now, I’m focused on sharpening my skills in both red team and blue team disciplines. I strongly believe that to defend against attacks, you first need to understand how they work.

So far, I’ve earned CompTIA Security+ and CySA+, TCM’s Practical Junior Penetration Tester (PJPT), and ISC2’s CISSP certifications.

As of March 2026, my current goal is to obtain TCM’s Practical Network Penetration Tester (PNPT), with the Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP) coming after that.

After completing the PJPT in July 2025, I worked through TCM’s Windows Privilege Escalation, Linux Privilege Escalation, OSINT, and External Playbook courses. All of this has been in preparation for the PNPT. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working through this content, particularly the Linux priv esc.

The name MidwestSec came about after attending BSides Des Moines. Up until then, I had never really had a cybersecurity handle or online identity. As I became more involved in the community, started writing technical content, and spent more time learning offensive security, I wanted a name that reflected both my interests and where I came from. MidwestSec felt like a natural fit.

Right now, I’m working through a set of recommended lab machines I found through Reddit (thanks to this Medium post). I recently completed Hack The Box’s Forest machine, and I’ll be posting a write-up soon detailing how I approached it.

Many of my earlier write-ups and notes were originally published on Medium. After my account was taken down due to content related to retired Hack The Box walkthroughs, I decided it was time to build a site that I controlled myself. This blog is the result of that decision and will serve as the permanent home for my content going forward. You’ll notice the post dates are done prior to this one. I’ve intentionally done this to preserve the order of completiion.

This blog will document my progress, challenges, and wins as I work toward the PNPT (and beyond). It also serves as a personal reference I can revisit over time. If you’re reading this, I hope you find something useful along the way.