Technician, business owner, accountant, now security
I started fixing computers in Ho Chi Minh City in 1998 and never really stopped. Over twenty years I moved from the bench to the network rack to the project plan — first as a technician at the Department of Science & Technology in Dong Nai, then running my own IT company, administering servers and VPNs for provincial government and corporate clients.
In 2019 I moved to Darwin and did something that surprised people: I went back to university for a Bachelor of Accounting. After two decades of building systems, I wanted to understand the numbers those systems were carrying. I finished at Charles Darwin University in 2022 and completed the Professional Year in 2023.
Then I went back to where I started, but deeper. Since January 2025 I've been studying part-time for an MSc in Computer Science with Cyber Security at the University of York, graduating January 2027. My research is on multi-factor authentication — not whether it works, but whether people will actually keep using it.
Today I'm Campus Coordinator at Canterbury Institute of Management's Darwin campus: first point of contact for students and staff, keeping the campus IT running, and handling the administrative side. Outside work I build things — most recently PTE Target, an English-exam practice platform I run on my own hardware.
Timeline
- Jan 2025 – Jan 2027
MSc Computer Science with Cyber Security (part-time, online)
University of York, UK
- Studying part-time and online alongside full-time work, graduating January 2027.
- Research topic: a task-based usability evaluation of TOTP, FIDO2 security keys and SMS codes — measuring whether people keep using a second factor, not whether it works.
- Oct 2022 – present
IT & Student Support Officer → Campus Coordinator
Canterbury Institute of Management, Darwin
- First point of contact for students and staff on the Darwin campus: hardware, accounts, classroom AV and everyday faults, resolved before they turn into tickets.
- Responsible for campus IT — workstation builds and rebuilds, peripheral and communication device setup, network and connectivity troubleshooting.
- Campus administration alongside the technical work: student records, database reporting and reconciliation — the half of the role the accounting degree turned out to be for.
- Oct 2020 – Oct 2022
IT Systems Consultant (freelance)
Sonadezi · Dong Nai Tourist · DOST Dong Nai · Agent Hai Pty Ltd
- Server, network and VPN administration for corporate and government clients, carried out remotely alongside full-time study in Darwin.
- Web hosting and colocation, including the day-to-day administration that keeps a small client estate running without an in-house team.
- Oct 2010 – Nov 2019
Director / IT Project Manager — own IT company
Equatorial Technology JSC (E-Tech), Vietnam
- Ran the company: scoping, quoting and delivery as well as the technical work — the point at which "technician" stopped describing the job.
- Server, VPN and network administration for provincial government and corporate clients, plus web hosting and colocation.
- Hardware supply and build, communication device installation, and the support relationship that comes after the invoice.
- Oct 2003 – Sep 2010
IT Technician
Dept. of Science & Technology, Dong Nai Province
- Built and ran the department's server room — conditioned power, cooling, suppression, and a virtualisation layer that took the core applications off individual machines.
- Worked on the city-wide network for the People's Committee and its ward offices, and the interprovincial data link to VDC Ho Chi Minh City.
- Converted the department's main meeting room to a digital one: conferencing hardware, audio processing tuned to the room, and a single tablet surface controlling lighting, screens and cameras.
Credentials
MSc Computer Science with Cyber Security
In progressUniversity of York · 2027
Professional Year of Accounting
Charles Darwin University · 2023
Bachelor of Accounting
Charles Darwin University · 2022
ISO/IEC 27001:2005 Internal ISMS Auditor
DAS Vietnam Certification · 2008
Network Specialist
VNU-HCM University of Science · 2003
Computer Assembly & Maintenance
VNU-HCM University of Science · 1998
Skills
Each group names the project it is demonstrated by. If I can’t point at something you can go and look at, it isn’t on this list.
Hardware
- PC assembly & build from components
- Hardware and peripheral installation
- Communication device setup
- VoIP configuration
- Diagnostics & repair
Networks & infrastructure
- Network configuration
- Network administration
- VPN troubleshooting
- Windows/Linux server admin
- Web hosting & colocation
Security
- Multi-factor authentication (TOTP, FIDO2/WebAuthn)
- Threat analysis
- Security engineering
- ISMS / ISO 27001 internal auditing
Authentication & access control
- Role-based permission models
- OAuth 2.0 (Google, Facebook)
- Passkey/WebAuthn implementation
- Session and credential handling
Applied AI
- LLM API integration
- Self-hosted inference on constrained hardware
- AI scoring and evaluation pipelines
- Cost modelling before committing to an API
Finance & data
- Excel (advanced)
- BAS & payroll fundamentals
- Database administration & reporting
- SQL / phpMyAdmin
Beyond work
Bilingual in English and Vietnamese, active in Darwin's Vietnamese community, and a home lab that has outgrown its shelf.