Times are HTTPS round-trips.DNS via 8.8.8.8.WHOIS via RDAP.
Welcome to My Site
Hi, I'm Blake Bratu. This is my little corner of the web, where I keep my resume, notes, and more. Consider this my professional and personal website. It's built to look like the early internet days as I am into old computers and the early web. Why not shake things up?
For potential employment, you'll find my resume in the above buttons and get to know me more. For others, welcome and feel free to look around.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do you actually do?
I'm a Senior Security Technical Consultant Engineer on Cisco's TAC. I work across most of the security infrastructure that companies use every day: VPN and remote access, Secure Access (SASE/SSE), firewalls, access control, DLP, identity, the routing and DNS underneath all of it, and more. Most of my cases involve more than one of those at once across many unique flows and situations. I also help with implementation and educate customers on best practices.
What are you working on?
A Bachelor's in Cloud Computing at Franklin University, finishing sometime in 2027. I am also pursuing the AWS Solutions Architect Associate certification.
Senior Security Technical Consultant Engineer (TAC) Cisco Systems
Support pre-sales POCs and post-sale FedRAMP and commercial environments by troubleshooting complex Cisco Secure Access (SASE/SSE) cloud issues.
Diagnose hybrid Secure Access issues across network and security stacks — routing, DLP, access control, deep-dive log analysis, system administration — within SLAs.
Partner with engineering teams through fast release cycles, creating workarounds and resolving zero-day issues on newly deployed features.
Guide implementation work as a highly requested technical advisor, holding a 10/10 customer rating across all surveys and accounts.
Act as the team’s VPN Subject Matter Expert and escalation point, onboarding and mentoring new hires through case reviews and coaching.
Aug 2022 – Feb 2025
Security Technical Consultant Engineer (TAC) Cisco Systems
Resolved 500+ customer network and VPN security cases across on-premises and cloud environments, protecting uptime for financially sensitive infrastructure.
Led live training on new Cisco security technologies, producing presentations and documentation for 30 engineers across two regional teams.
Translated complex technical concepts into clear, actionable insight for stakeholders, cutting turnaround time on projects and troubleshooting.
Identified, tested and documented 10+ firewall/router product bugs, investigating workarounds and driving fixes through development teams.
Built and maintained customer environments in internal labs to validate implementations, analyse pre-production behaviour and stage deployments.
May 2021 – Aug 2021
Security Consultant Engineer Intern Cisco Systems
Created a training environment with Secure Network Analytics (network visibility/detection), giving current and future interns hands-on experience and removing manual setup.
Franklin UniversityIn progress · Aug 2027 Bachelor’s in Cloud Computing
Guilford Technical Community CollegeCompleted Associate in Network Management — founder and president of the Networking Club, helping students build networking and IT skills.
