Cory Farr

Technical Support Engineer | I help sysadmins & network teams find and fix the root cause of security, patching & network problems | SIEM (SolarWinds SEM) · Tenable/Nessus · Patch Mgmt (WSUS/SCCM) · AD · Linux

Provo, Utah, United States

About

I'm the person who helps system and network administrators find and fix the root cause of security, patching, and network problems — the one who digs in, finds what's actually wrong, and gets it resolved. Across 10+ years in enterprise IT support and operations, that's been the constant, whatever the tools. My depth is on the security and infrastructure side: 7+ years supporting SolarWinds' Security Event Manager (SIEM) for security-event analysis, Patch Manager with WSUS and SCCM for large Windows patching environments (including certificate management for third-party patching), and Access Rights Manager; plus Tenable.sc and Nessus for vulnerability scanning. That work repeatedly put me alongside sysadmins and network admins, helping them trace and resolve issues across their networks. Most recently I monitored a 500+ server and device production environment for a major aerospace client — designing and tuning PagerDuty alerting, managing user accounts and access in coordination with the Active Directory team, performing change-controlled configuration and upgrades, and investigating incidents to documented root cause. I script in Python, PowerShell, and Bash, query with SQL, and have trained incoming engineers to expert level — building the documentation and runbooks my teams ran on. Based in Utah County; open to remote roles or on-site work across Utah County and southern Utah.

Experience

  • IT Monitoring Specialist (Infrastructure Support) at Apex Systems
    Aug 2024 - May 2026 · 1 yr 10 mos

    • Monitored 500+ network devices and servers (Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac) using the SolarWinds Orion suite — NPM, SAM, NCM, NTA, and SRM • Acted as first responder to production alerts and incidents, assessing impact and troubleshooting connectivity and performance issues via SNMP, WMI, WinRM, and agent-based collection • Built and tuned PagerDuty alerting pipelines (SMS, email, phone) for mission-critical infrastructure • Managed SolarWinds user accounts and permissions in coordination with the Active Directory team, including scheduled password rotations, periodic access reviews, and access troubleshooting • Performed configuration, maintenance, and version upgrades of enterprise SolarWinds environments under change-control • Troubleshot REST API usage and integrations, investigated data with SQL, and automated tasks with PowerShell and Python/Bash • Resolved ServiceNow and LANDesk work items under defined SLAs, collaborating with engineering, networking, and vendor teams

  • Owner — Data-Recovery R&D at SecOnus, LLC
    Jan 2024 - Dec 2024 · 1 yr

    • Founded a Utah-registered LLC developing local-AI tooling for data recovery — training AI to assist in recovering lost or damaged data from storage media • Built on open-source Linux data-recovery utilities such as TestDisk • Closed the venture in December 2024 after accepting the Apex Systems engagement

  • Program Manager at Danville Services
    Feb 2023 - Dec 2023 · 11 mos

    • Managed the Direct Support Professionals of a disability-care program — hiring support, training, scheduling, and daily operations • Oversaw compliance documentation and on-call rotations, keeping a round-the-clock program staffed and audit-ready

  • Technical Support Engineer (TSE) at Tenable
    Sep 2021 - Jun 2022 · 10 mos

    • Technical Support over the phone, through email, and via chat • Helped customers scan their networks for security vulnerabilities • Worked with the Tenable IO team to review on prem and cloud deployment related issues • Supported all Nessus deployments including Nessus Scanners, Nessus Professional, and Nessus Managers • Supported the Tenable Security Center (Tenable.SC) • Supported the Nessus Network Monitor (NNM) • Supported the Tenable Log Correlation Engine (LCE) • Escalated critical cases to engineering with complete, reproducible diagnostic packages

  • SolarWinds ()
    • Application Engineer (Stand-In)
      May 2019 - Sep 2021 · 2 yrs 5 mos

      • Promoted directly from Technical Support II into a stand-in Application Engineer role, bypassing the standard Technical Support III tier • Worked directly with the Engineering team supporting Security Event Manager (SEM) hardware and virtual appliances; managed incoming JIRA bug and feature-request cases and resolved escalated SEM cases • Verified fixes and releases against real customer scenarios before rollout • Wrote SQL/SWQL queries and Python/Bash scripts to reproduce issues and automate diagnostics • Trained and mentored incoming Technical Support engineers on SEM, Patch Manager, and ARM internals — developing the training materials the team onboarded with • Served on the company's response to the 2020 supply-chain attack (SUNBURST): brought in to help the Orion team for over a year, resolving hundreds of customer cases to redeploy and remediate Orion environments in the incident's aftermath

    • Technical Support II — Security Pillar
      May 2017 - May 2019 · 2 yrs 1 mo

      • Supported SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM/SIEM) and Patch Manager for enterprise customers, handling escalations from L1 • Primary focus: the Linux-based SEM appliance — deployment, log-source onboarding, event correlation, and security-event analysis • Diagnosed installation, networking, performance, and integration issues across Windows Server and Active Directory domain environments • Deployed and configured enterprise Windows patching environments — SolarWinds Patch Manager on top of WSUS (upstream/downstream design) with SCCM integration, including certificate management for third-party patching • Worked alongside customers' system and network administrators to stand up and troubleshoot their patching, Active Directory, and OU environments

    • Technical Support I — Security Event Manager (SIEM)
      Dec 2014 - May 2017 · 2 yrs 6 mos

      • Helped enterprise customers deploy, fix, and maintain SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM), working tickets through full lifecycle from intake to resolution • Analyzed application and system logs to isolate root cause; authored knowledge-base articles used across the support organization