Stand Out
Portfolio Templates
Templates, examples, and frameworks for documenting your missions and presenting your work to employers.
Mission Write-Up Template
Use this structure for every mission you complete. Consistent write-ups build a professional portfolio.
Mission Overview
What was the goal? What real-world scenario does this mirror? (2–3 sentences)
Environment
What tools did you use? OS, versions, cloud provider. Reproducibility matters.
What I Found
For audit missions: document each finding with severity, evidence (screenshot/output), and impact.
What I Did
Step-by-step explanation of your approach. Show your reasoning, not just commands.
Results
Before/after. Metrics if possible. What improved? Why does it matter?
Key Learnings
What was non-obvious? What would you do differently? This shows maturity.
Strong CV Bullet Points
Copy and adapt these bullet points for your own missions. The formula: action verb + tool/method + quantified result.
Hardened Ubuntu 22.04 server: configured UFW, SSH key-only access, fail2ban, and auditd — reduced attack surface by removing 12 unused services
Conducted AWS security audit using Prowler (CIS benchmark): identified and remediated 3 critical misconfigurations including public S3 buckets and wildcard IAM policies
Built automated threat detection pipeline with ELK Stack and Python: ingested 50k+ log events/hour, wrote Sigma rules detecting brute-force and port-scan patterns
Integrated security into CI/CD pipeline (GitHub Actions): added Semgrep, Trivy, and tfsec — security gates block merges on CRITICAL findings
Containerised web application using Docker with security hardening: distroless base image, read-only filesystem, dropped Linux capabilities, non-root user
Formula: Verb + what you did + tool you used + quantified impact or outcome
GitHub Project Structure
Organise every mission as its own repo with this structure.
Project overview, what you built, tools used
Write-up, screenshots, evidence of findings
Scripts, configs, Terraform, Dockerfiles
Vulnerability reports, audit outputs
Before/after configs, fix documentation