John Shows

I started my professional IT career working for a privately owned repair company in my hometown, always striving and yearning for more. With little guidance or direction, I exercise full autonomy with adequate time management, accountability, and steady growth in whatever position I’m placed. I lean on my team’s knowledge base when necessary while remaining proactive within the scope set out by my supervisors. While skills can be taught, I bring to the table integrity, adaptability, passion, and honesty, all with the mindset that there is always room for growth and improvement. If you value these traits, then I look forward to working with you.

I bring to the table 16 years of IT professional experience, having worked in a myriad of environments ranging from mom and pop IT repair shop to ship yard under DoD to health information systems under HIPAA to aerospace manufacturing facility. My professional journey has exposed me to different means and methods, allowing an agnostic, logistical approach to troubleshooting issues, be they endpoint, network, and/or compliance related. Having worked several years in customer facing roles and being promoted to back-end roles, I understand the interdependencies that allow stakeholders, customers, and users to achieve their goals. Along with academia, I enjoy getting my hands dirty and sinking my teeth into real-world, on-the-job experience, pooling together years of experience administering both Windows and Linux environments, endpoints and servers alike, while maintaining up-to-date technical write-ups for both users and technicians to proactively reduce ticket count and maintain compliance with Plan of Action Milestones (PoAMs).

My current role has me researching, developing, and maintaining gold images in line with CIS Benchmarks and DISA STIG as well as writing and maintaining up-to-date Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to remain in compliance with FISMA Moderate by using applicable NIST frameworks. I'm also project lead and lead administrator for MFA deployment and sustainment. 

I strive to stay current in my understanding of technology, having obtained two AAS degrees, one in Web Development and the other in Computer Servicing. I'm on track to graduate December 2025 with a B.S. in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance with several certifications along the way.  The most recent certifications I've obtained in the past 2 months are my (ISC)2 SSCP and ITIL v4 Foundations Certificate in IT Service Management.