Mustafa Onur Cay

PhD researcher in cybersecurity

Exploring cybersecurity and resilience in connected energy systems.
Reviewing smart-grid architectures and security research to refine the research questions.

Administered Microsoft SQL Server databases including backup and restore operations and access control.
Supported the cyber security team during internal security audits.
Researched migration from proprietary database systems to open-source alternatives.
Managed project work and tickets in Jira.

Hardened an API gateway with a Lambda Authorizer and controls addressing unauthorised access plus XSS and CSRF risks.
Developed AWS Lambda functions integrated with DynamoDB and CloudFront.
Automated cloud deployments with CloudFormation infrastructure-as-code templates.
Configured a local development environment for an in-house management platform and tested API integrations using Postman and Microsoft Graph.
Rebuilt the company web platform as a modern Next.js application.

Built a virtualised industrial control system testbed with two routers and eight Windows hosts.
Used MITRE Caldera to emulate structured APT attack chains.
Generated labelled provenance data for research into attack reconstruction and detection.
Analysed attacker tactics and techniques and procedures in operational technology environments.

Built federated anomaly and intrusion-detection models using scikit-learn and Flower on UNSW-NB15.
Evaluated privacy-preserving detection across distributed clients.
Compared federated model-merging approaches with centrally trained intrusion-detection baselines.

Operate a Raspberry Pi and Docker-based home lab.
Run network-wide DNS filtering and VPN-gated services.
Maintain Nginx plus custom dashboards and SMB file sharing.
Use the environment to practise Linux administration and networking and service hardening and secure self-hosting.

MSci in Computing Science with Honours, specialising in Cybersecurity — Second Class Honours, Division I (2:1)