After Pandoc fell flat, I deployed Gotenberg — a stateless PDF API with Chromium inside — on an unprivileged LXC container. Docker-in-LXC, it turns out, is easier than I remembered.
About Me
I am Niklas, a sociable IT-er with a passion for CyberSecurity.
I am Belgian by birth but moved to Switzerland when I was young, absorbing the culture and mindset. Coming from a big family my heart already had a lot of space for those dear to me, the Swiss-Italian culture made room for a lot more.
Spotting work needing to be done is one of those beroepsmisvormingen that I carry over from working in Horeca. When hired, I initially set out to learn the job and people, finding small (or big) efficiency gains that can be made. Once I'm comfortable and worked in, I look for enhancements that help out the whole team.
Graduating from university gave me a wide knowledge base, which I have deepened through hands-on experience with multiple technologies, teams, and environments. I maintain a high standard of work and eagerly find solutions to problems. I have a hands-on background in operations, incident detection and response, and securing complex environments.
Skills
Security ▾
SOC
SIEM
Incident Response
NIST
Blue Team Tools ▾
Splunk
Elastic
Wireshark
Suricata
Tech Stack ▾
Python
Terraform
Linux
Docker
Soft Skills ▾
Adaptability
Curious
Languages
Certifications
Side Projects
Resume
Experience
05/2025 — Present
Cybersecurity Architect
Splynter · Antwerp, Belgium- Started with a standard based on NIST 800-53, OWASP and ISO, and through refinement and automation, made the assessment process re-useable, deterministic, and streamlined. Examples include several Azure, AWS and GCP components, a Network modernization, PAM, Azure ML rollout, SAST tools, Windows 11, and many more.
- As head security assessor, defined security blueprints and ensured Windows 11 met L1 CIS Baseline, applied endpoint protection and patch management policies via Intune/M365; enforced identity controls through Entra ID
- Responded to several high-priority vulnerabilities by developing custom KQL alert rules and Microsoft Sentinel detections as interim controls until permanent fixes were deployed
- Moved the organization from limited code control to scanning-by-default using SAST tools (SonarQube and CodeQL derivatives), replacing manual code audits with CI/CD-integrated security scanning
- Taught courses on safe usage of agentic AI and AI for developing software to 20+ colleagues across technical and non-technical teams
- Set up several automation projects including automatic requirements assignment, policy translator, and CyberSecurity newsletter
- Security lead in development projects that require communication in Dutch, English and French
09/2023 — 05/2025
Integration Consultant
Solita · Leuven, Belgium- Inherited weak operations discipline, improving alerting, logging, monitoring and observability and documenting the incident process to ensure repeatability, consistency and availability. 100% adherence to defined SLAs across 10+ P5–P1 incidents
- Replaced manual deployment of software with a CI/CD, including automated testing, quality and security checks using SonarQube (SAST). Promotion of code went from days to minutes
- Collaboration with MSP was frustrating, slow and expensive, so I architected and developed the same distributed platform in Azure using infrastructure as code (Bash, Terraform, Python). This included automated scaling, decreased cost by 40%, and achieved a 20–40% gain in performance
- Led performance task force on distributed integration platform, reducing real-time API latency by 30–60% through system-level optimisation
- On own initiative, suggested and built several automations in Python, Java and PowerShell that improved security, efficiency and/or documentation
10/2019 — 08/2023
Bartender Manager
DE WEERELT · Leuven, Belgium- Entirely responsible for the well-being of clients at my bar
- Often being the only bartender present and working until 5 A.M., every week presents new challenges and opportunities to learn from
07/2022
Internship
Solita · Leuven, Belgium- Delivered a fully playable Capture-the-flag covering all 10 OWASP API Security risks within a 3-month internship window
- Studied the security possibilities of Gravitee, an open-source API Management software
- Coded the front-end website associated to the Capture-the-flag game using Vue.js
- Built containerized application using Python and JavaScript, deployed on Azure
07/2021 — 10/2021
Backend Developer
KU Leuven · Leuven, Belgium- Redesigned and re-implemented architecture from the ground up based on business requirements
- Adapted MySQL database & Python to Docker-containerized Flask back-end
09/2020 — 02/2021
DRAMA Teaching Assistant
KU Leuven · Leuven, Belgium- Helping first year students with learning a Dutch Assembly Language
11/2017 — 10/2019
Waiter
Notre Dame Quasimodo · Leuven, Belgium- Worked full-time serving the largest brasserie in Leuven
- Trained new people
Education
2021 — 2023
MEng Computer Science · Security
KU Leuven · Leuven, Belgium- Encryption & Abstract Mathematics; cryptographic foundations including modular arithmetic and protocol theory
- Software engineering, system architecture, requirements engineering
- Secure software using state automata, developing buffer overflows and other basic C exploits
- Machine learning: built a Q&A model from scratch — tokenization, training loop and evaluation
- Thesis: implemented cryptographic modules for a pseudoanonymisation system within a distributed file-saving architecture — covering trust models, data flows, and privacy-preserving protocols (GDPR-compliant)
2018 — 2021
Bachelor in Computer Science
KU Leuven · Leuven, Belgium- Mathematical foundation of Computer Science: automata, logic and programming paradigms
- Building of software: the software life-cycle, maintenance, design patterns, data structures, and time/space complexity of algorithms
- Bachelor Thesis: built a recommender system using ML — evaluated student readiness from past exercise performance to recommend appropriate coding exercises
2013 — 2017
High School
Liceo Lugano 1 · Lugano, Switzerland- Physics & the application of Mathematics
- Course on Informatics, exploring my IT-teacher's Cyber abilities
Blog Posts
Deploying N8N — the open-source workflow automation tool — inside an LXC container on my Proxmox home lab.
From red team to blue team—my experience earning the HTB Certified Defensive Security Analyst certification and learning to think like a defender.
Repurposing an old laptop to encrypt my data at rest and host ProxMox to deploy VMs/Containers, all managed via Terraform.
The shortcuts, references, and DNS tweaks I used to get a custom-domain GitHub Pages site online in a weekend.
How Billbuddy moved from a tucked-away home lab to a carefully exposed service with hardened edges.