I'm Michelle Duell, transitioning from military intelligence to cybersecurity with a focus on defensive security and threat intelligence.

I work as an intelligence analyst, where I've spent years analyzing patterns, tracking adversaries, and turning complex data into actionable insights. Those same skills translate directly to what I'm passionate about now: blue team operations, incident response, and threat hunting. I also co-presented at the WiCyS 2026 Conference in Washington, DC on reverse engineering with Ghidra for DNS exfiltration detection, covering static binary analysis from novice to professional level.

As a SANS Cyber Academy Scholar and GIAC Advisory Board member, I've earned GCIH (98%), GSEC (95%), and GFACT (100%) certifications, along with a Trusted AI Safety Expert (TAISE) certification from the Cloud Security Alliance. I've put those skills to the test in competition, placing 1st Overall and 1st Industry Professional at the WiCyS 2026 Conference CTF, 1st in the WiCyS Cyber Quest Tournament out of ~325 competitors, 2nd in the WiCyS x Target Cyber Defense Challenge, and earning Runner-Up Most Creative Report and 5th place in the SANS Holiday Hack Challenge.

Outside of competitions, I'm building practical experience through my homelab and independent research. I deployed a cloud honeypot on Google Cloud Platform running T-Pot for 28 days, capturing and analyzing live attack traffic from real-world threat actors. My homelab runs Proxmox with Wazuh SIEM, Suricata IDS, Active Directory, and MITRE Caldera for purple team operations and detection engineering.