IT & Security Lab

Live demo: https://vilius-lab.vercel.app/

IT & Security Lab is my long-term practical portfolio for IT support, cybersecurity learning, SOC practice, and home lab documentation.

The project started as a SOC learning journal, but I am expanding it into a broader IT and cybersecurity portfolio. It now includes my learning journey, interactive SOC practice scenarios, realistic IT support tickets, and frontend development work.

The main goal is simple: document real progress, build practical skills, and create useful practice tools for myself and others.

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Current Content

• 185 CySA+ / SOC practice questions
• 22 raw SOC investigation scenarios from my learning journal
• 30 interactive Security Lab scenarios
• 124 Security Lab questions
• 8 completed IT support investigation scenarios
• 10 structured questionnaire entries
• Raw markdown practice sessions preserved in the repository

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Main Sections

My SOC Journey

This section documents my SOC learning process over time.

It includes raw practice answers, reviewed responses, mistakes, corrections, and notes from my CySA+ and SOC preparation.

The goal is not to make everything look perfect. I keep this section mostly raw because I want it to show real improvement, uncertainty, and progress.

Security Lab

Security Lab is an interactive SOC practice section.

It includes realistic security investigation scenarios where users answer step-by-step multiple-choice questions, check their decisions, review explanations, and track progress.

Current scenario categories include:

• Cloud / Identity
• Malware Analysis
• DNS / Command and Control
• Lateral Movement
• Web Application Compromise
• Insider Threat / DLP
• Ransomware / Incident Response
• Vulnerability Management
• SOC Operations
• Linux Security

Features include search, filtering, answer checking, score tracking, completion tracking, and progress saved in localStorage.

IT Support Scenarios

This section contains realistic IT support and junior system administrator scenarios reproduced and solved in my home lab.

Each scenario follows a support workflow:

1. Original ticket
2. Investigation and solution
3. Final communication

Current IT support scenarios include:

• Group Policy not applying due to wrong OU placement
• Network share access denied due to missing AD group membership
• Account lockout investigation
• DNS resolution issue
• Wazuh agent not reporting
• Remote PowerShell / WinRM failure
• DHCP / APIPA network issue
• Software installation permission issue

These scenarios focus on practical troubleshooting, Active Directory, Group Policy, SMB shares, NTFS permissions, Windows clients, and clear user communication.

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Purpose

I created this project for three main reasons.

1. Document Real Learning Progress

This project shows my learning process over time, including practice answers, mistakes, corrections, and improvements.

Some content is intentionally left raw because I want the project to reflect real growth instead of only showing polished final results.

2. Show Practical IT and Security Skills

The project demonstrates skills across both IT support and cybersecurity, including:

• Windows troubleshooting
• Active Directory and Group Policy
• File share and permissions troubleshooting
• SOC-style investigation thinking
• Alert triage
• Incident response concepts
• CySA+ study and practice
• React frontend development
• JSON-driven content
• State management
• localStorage progress tracking

3. Build Useful Practice Tools

Long term, I want this project to become more than a personal portfolio.

I want to keep building interactive tools where users can practice SOC investigations, IT support tickets, troubleshooting decisions, and communication skills.

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Project Structure

Journal/
  Raw markdown practice sessions and learning notes

src/data/my-journey/
  Structured questionnaire entries used by the My Journey page

src/data/scenario-lab/
  Interactive Scenario Lab questions and scenarios

src/data/it-support/
  IT support scenario data used by the IT Support Scenarios page

src/components/
  Reusable React components such as cards, navigation, and section headers

src/pages/
  Main application pages:
  - Home
  - My Journey
  - Scenario Lab
  - IT Support Scenarios
  - About Me

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Technologies Used

• React
• React Router
• Tailwind CSS
• JavaScript
• JSON
• Vite
• Git / GitHub
• Vercel

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Roadmap

Planned improvements:

• Add more IT support scenarios
• Add more Scenario Lab content
• Improve explanations for difficult questions
• Add category-based progress tracking
• Add question randomization
• Add review mode for completed scenarios
• Add more realistic SOC evidence formats
• Add detection engineering examples
• Add Sigma-style detection logic practice
• Improve mobile layout and UI polish
• Explore an interactive IT support simulator

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Notes

This project is still growing.

Some answers, notes, and practice sessions are intentionally preserved in raw form, including mistakes and uncertainty. The goal is to show real learning progression, not to make the entire project look artificially perfect.

CySA+ passed: 2026-06-17